It only makes a difference insofar as how many WUs you will request. For example if you have an additional work buffer of 0, your computer won't stock up on Betas and thus may get 1-2 and then when it returns to get more, the Betas could be gone.

My strategy to get Betas has been to keep a normal cache anywhere from 0-1 day from all the projects I work on (currently I'm only crunching ACH and Beta at WCG). I have WCG set to do the vast majority of crunching though (around 81%). So it updates frequently trying to get WCG units. If I notice BOINC picking up some Betas, or if I see a Beta announcement ahead of time, I'll pick up about a day of work from my other projects, and then set everything but WCG to "No new work," and then up my work buffer to 10 days.

That strategy has worked really well for me. I know people who used the same strategy to get the ACH badge - unfortunately I think I started too late doing that. :(

The only issue with this is it requires pretty frequent monitoring of your boxes, which isn't possible for everyone.

As for Diana's comments, I'm not sure how reducing the cache from 2.5-1 day would change anything, unless she also changed her polling interval.

I don't think the Betas were released until the 16th anyway. I still don't see how REDUCING the work buffer would enable you to get more WUs - unless your projects were set up in such a way that you constantly had 10 days worth of other projects and had trouble getting any WCG at all (which is more an issue with your project weights than with your work buffer). What enables you to get more is INCREASING it, particularly if you're moving it from a low work buffer to a high work buffer at the same time Betas are being released. EG, you have a buffer of nothing or of a day, and you increase it up to ten days, BOINC needs more WUs, and so it downloads a huge cache of Betas. The trick there of course is watching to see when Betas are released by monitoring the forums and your boxes.

The other thing that would be a factor is reducing your contact limit. Having unlimited network access means that BOINC can contact WCG the maximum amount of times to get WUs.

I have no idea how WCG allocate Beta WUs to clients, most likely it is random................but I know if I was running a beta trial I would like to get the units back ASAP and as the FAAH betas have a 10 day deadline I would prefer that machines with a lower cache had them so they came back quicker.

I received some BETA units two days ago - but none since then. Have they all been sent out, or will there be more available?

Although yesterday over 1k beta-results have been returned, it seems, that no new beta's are beeing sent out at the moment... Am I right?

Is already planned, when the next beta-WU's will be released? I'm working on my next batch...