First - Load the Google Toolbar, by visiting Google and loading the toolbar from tools. On the current homepage, click on more and load.
The Toolbar gives you an excellent popup blocker while also enhancing your websearches with a highlight feature for the word(s) you are searching.
Go back to the Google tools page and click on Google Labs, (boiling test-tube)
then click on Google Compute.
A default name will be assigned by Google. However, should one of us, enter a new name eg: freepers4Google, we could all form a team that could go to the top very soon.
I installed this tool on about 20 PCs last year, and now sit in the top 10 with nearly 700 assignments completed.
You have the option at install, or any time later to use the distributing computing command either at standard or conservative mode, and then another option at 100%, 80% lower.
Even at 100%, standard, the google process only works when the user or other processes are active. It is set at the very lowest priority for your cpu. You will not notice it affecting your PC, unless you watch your cpu cycles, and then will notice your PC is humming along at 100% all the time.
I have it installed on my wife's three PCs and she has never even noticed it is there, and she is extremely sensitive about the speed and response from her PCs.
Just to suggest that someone here could take the lead, using the google tool, establish a team name, provide a link for assistance, then occasionally update all of us as to how the team is doing.
If you leave your PC on most of the time, it is a great opportunity to use the electricity effectively.
On a 3 ghz cpu the average assignment take about 2 days, while a celeron 500 mhz might take 7-10 days. when completed, you will have a file of about 1 megabyte to upload to stanford. This works even with dial-ups, as the only connection required is between assignments, to receive the next project and to upload your results.
The Mac OSX team, made up of people on Apple/PPC machines, has 1300 members, and has completed 188,604 units at the moment. The HardOCP team, made up of people on Intel/AMD boxes, has more than 5,000 members and has completed 1,802,804 units. Now, let's see - if I want to do some distributed computing, and have to choose between one platform or the other, which one should I target? Hmmmmm. That's a tough one. I guess I could choose the platform with the greater total computing power, but then again, the other one does have a fruit on the box...
For distributed/parallel computing, the speed of any one node is not an appropriate measure of performance - the only thing that really matters is aggregate performance. That's not what Apple wants anyone to take from this, but then again, they've always been better at marketing than just about anything else. ;)
Happy New Years
there this end take on the word FOLDING I have no clue how it started or why....
This one is called Folding Protein At Home???
whatever
but I thought of you Nully a Mac User