thinking about folding a few pc's at work

Komete

Hello all, heres a link to where I work at https://www.groupbenefits.org/servlet/page?_pageid=468&_dad=portal30&_schema=PORTAL30

We handle all the state insurance for state employees. There are about 320ish computers in this building. All are p4 1.7 with 1 gig of pc 2100 memory. There're nothing to brag about obviously but hey they can fold.

I was thinking it would be a good Idea if someone from short media would email them and see if they would be interested in folding when the pc's are in screensaver mode like when people are out to lunch etc under team 93. I can get a few emails if you need or give you an adress and name of who to send a letter to. It's free nad it's a good cause they may just very well do it. OGB is very forward and open thinking. There is deffinatly an air of good will there.

Personally I have access to about 7 pc's or so that I can setup to fold. But I have a few questions.

#1 Will it stop folding and go to logon screen quickly?
#2 Will it make the pc sluggish when the folding stops?
#3 I need very simple software that will have no conflicts with win2k
#4 are there any regular updates?

I have folded before but never really let it run long enough to really contribute can you give me some links where I can get back into action? I wouldn't mind leaving a few pc's on overnight to help get a cure.

Komete

Clutch

http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3

That thread is full of info on F@H.
F@H only uses what cpu usage other programs are not calling for, so there should be no issue of it slowing any computers down. I have had no conflicts with using the the console or graphical versions in Win2k. You can set it to run as a service so that it starts when the computer starts up, and the user will not notice anything different.

mmonnin

Would installing it as a service work better than a screensaver?

1. It should but I have never used the SS. It uses OpenGL which is known to be buggy.
2. No
3. No other software needed.
4. No. Install it once and it will work for awhile. The only update would be new cores. and that doesnt happen vary often.

Komete

Well I'm compiling information and arguments for it to submit to the CEO and CIO. Somtime in teh middle of the week I'll get it going on my pc. Maybe I'll see about getting some of the IT guys involved in trying it out.

KingFish

I have it installed on quite a few (20 or so) computers around the "office" and have not experienced any problems whatsoever due to folding at home. One thing you may want to consider if installing it on many computers in one central location is the bandwidth requirements. Not counting large work units, you can count on each machine having to download about half a meg of data and upload about one meg of data per work unit. Make sure that this won't interfere with applications that need the internet or your network. From what I recall FAH uses port 8080 for work unit data transfer if you or the IT staff needs to monitor what the actual data transfer is. From a machine standpoint I would recommend installing it as a service and let it run transparently in the background. I wouldn't install it as a screen saver or even the windows gui version in a corporate environment. People will see it and will be unable to resist tinkering with it and inevitably screw the program up from functioning correctly if given the chance. Install it as a service and fuhgetaboutit. The program itself is very well behaved and will have no impact on performance if large work units are not selected. I don't know about the impact on performance for large work units. I wouldn't enable large work units on machines in a corporate environment but that's simply a personal opinion. Good luck on your pitch

KF

muddocktor

Yeah, definitely install the console as a service, which v5 natively supports now. Stay away from the big packet work units for now though; they use quite a bit of bandwidth and the work units are still kind of buggy. Also, they use significant amounts of ram to run too (100-150 MB avg), so they wouldn't be a good choice for the typical office box.