Are you using the UD agent?

BOINC. Version 5.10.28

Ok... I hate to drag up such an old post... but, as a PC Tech... I feel I must.

I'm a PC Repair Technician at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. I spend most of my day working on ******* computers needing malware control. However... I see alot of computers in here needing new capacitors or new power supplies, and most of these machines are less than 3 years old. I've got computers in my basement... that haven't been turned off in 15 years. Never had a single problem from either the power supply or the capacitors on the motherboard.

In a sense, a computer is much like a car. City driving (stop and start) will destroy a car much faster than highway driving. Same (essentially) is true of computers. Everytime you turn off a computer... you are reducing the number of years that computer will be good for. Wear and tear on computers is not something that should be taken lightly.

This is not really a decision to be taken lightly either... on one hand you are burning lots of extra power by leaving your computer on. On the other hand... you drastically reduce the life of your computer by turning it off (note: this does not apply to older CRTs... burnin will result from "always-on" conditions).

As a geek... I can justify every CPU cycle of every machine I own (more than 200). Not one computer is ever turned off (except in cases of failure, which is exceedingly rare for my computers). So, in my case, never turning a machine off is the way to go.

For the non-geeks, who rarely use a computer at all... then turning if off may, indeed, be the sensible thing to do.

Overall though... I cannot count the number of computers I've had to repair... that, if they had been left on all the time, would never have been in my shop. The average "idiot" user will go through 15+ computers in their lifetime. The average gamer... will burn through more than 200 computers in their lifetime. The average geek, like myself, will likely acquire more than 200 computers... but will keep every one of those in working conditions.

How much more damage to the environment... is the average gamer and the average "idiot" user doing to the environment, than the average geek? How many computers, full of crap like mercury, lead, arsenic, and other dangerous materials... are currently in landfills poisoning our environment, because of these two groups of people?

We geeks are actually doing far more to help... than we could ever hurt.

Lyos Gemini Norezel

Edited for inappropriate language...cih

Exactly.

How much power does a researchers equipment require?
How much power does the secondary equipment, such as lights to to light up the labs, burn?

The OP's statement was so short-sighted. By helping the researchers now... we are burning far less power than all the labs that would be needed to do the equivalent of what we do daily. Put into it's proper, long term perspective... we are actually doing the world a vast service... and not just by saving lives/fighting disease.

I'm actually working now to put up a linux cluster of about 100 different machines (Beowulf cluster). If I did not intend to put this to use crunching WCG work units... then I could not justify the cluster at all... except as yet another, rather expensive, toy for the geek (me) to play with.

Lyos Gemini Norezel