Two points:

1) You MUST have permission to run the Agent on any computer that is not yours. Please do not try to run this surreptitiously on computers owned by other people. For a presentation you might want to print out several pages from the site from 'Join Now', 'Projects Showcase', and 'About Us'. Also the Press Release on the Institute for Systems Biology site is interesting. If you cannot get permission, then cheerfully drop it / uninstall it.

2) If for some valid reason you want to turn off a computer at some time, a search with Google should quickly lead to a number of free utilities for a timed shut down for your OS. This is a function that I will confidently state, as my private opinion, shall never be implemented in an Agent released by the World Community Grid. IBM will not release a program with a "Boss" button.

Lawrence

Added: Polls are a good idea. After some more thought about Agent design, the staff might want to test opinions. By all means, make suggestions about what you think are desirable changes for the next Agent.

I have talked to my boss before I installed the software. You misunderstood. My boss didn't want to have a larger electrical bill (this was what I meant), the problem was not the Agent. Secondly I wanted the agent to finish it's current process before the computer was to shut down. So, while a 3rd party software might be a compromise it will not solve the problem.
To finish I want to add that the polls will be introduced in future versions. I think that this will greatly increase the no. of computers the agent is installed on, because it will become a very good piece of software.

Cristian Scrieciu (RO)

P.S.: Does the agent take advantage of a Hyper-Threading system? Two of the ones I was talking about before have Hyper-Threading enabled but the overall processor load does not go over 50%.

A "shutdown" option really only has much value if you know you're coming up to the 3 week WU limit (the limit for the protein folding project), and you are planning on being out of town. In which case you would not want to see the time spent wasted, but you don't want to leave your computer running for the duration of your absence (e.g. 2 week vacation). In addition to a check box to shut down at end of work unit there would probably need to be a display of when the work unit began. Then there's the user education about the 3 week limit and how that effects the WU, yada-yada-yada. This is probably too much work for too little payback (not enough WU's in this long running condition), but it's worth a thought. The guys behind the curtain would have a better idea of the value of those lost WU's. :)

John