I am more skeptical that there are so many 5-year-old computers out there. Computers are usually depreciated to zero value within three years and are typically replaced every three years. But if Sekerob's prediction that it will soon be possible to send out work units sized according to the client's appetite, then this technology will certainly make it possible for weak and strong clients to coexist happily (without weak clients imposing the high network traffic of short WUs on everyone else). I hope that when this technology becomes available, it will be possible for the user to influence the WU size though some sort of preference setting. With a 12-day window, as a 24/7 cruncher I would probably want to routinely pull down 4-day (96-hour) jobs, possibly even longer than that!

I have the same wish as you but for the opposite reason: I don't like long WUs for several reasons. The first one is that I like to see things moving. An other one is that I want to be able to jump from one project to another very quickly, say in a few hours only, for testing purpose or to evaluate a new project as soon as possible. With a quad and not too long WUs this is easily achievable. But if the new feature is automatically sending longer units to faster machines and shorter ones to slower machines I am afraid my quad will get stuck by what I consider today as monster units (so you guess how I see your 4-day units! ). Also, I have no bandwith or traffic problem, 12 Mb download speed most of the time and no traffic limit from the ISP, therefore traffic has never been a problem for me, even when AC@H was running.

But different people, different needs, and I understand that you like or need long WUs. I am only wishing that they will not be imposed regardless of members preferences.

Cheers. Jean.

First, what is a 5-year old computer? It just happens that I have one running 24/7 close to my quad. Precisely it is 5 years and one month old and when I bought it it was in the upper part of the range of normal machines, I mean excluding those high tech machines that you can buy twice cheaper only by waiting 6 months! At this time those very good "normal" machines were Pentium 4 HT, and mine is only a 2.4 GHz one.

This machine is returning 180 credits a day, which is far from your outstanding daily contribution, but is not "close to zero" by all means. Practically, to set things clearly it is about one eighth of the quad I have built earlier this year (only for fun and curiosity, because the P4 is still much more powerful than what I need). 1/8th is not null, and 1/4th (compared to a common dual core) is even less negligible.

So 180 credits a day, that makes a monthly contribution of 5400 credits per month in my 24/7 case, 1800 credits a month for machines running only 8 hours a day, and 900 for those which run 4 hours in the evening.

After reading your initial post earlier this week I have spent some time studying BoincStats individual "month" results for WCG. Here it goes:

Over the last 30 days,
81,818 members have contributed at least 1 credit (not that many members, by the way)
30,133 members (37 %) have contributed less than   900 credits (4 hours/day)
44,139 members (54 %) have contributed less than 1,800 credits (8 hours/day)
64,280 members (79 %) have contributed less than 5,400 credits (full time)

This is a count of members who have not more or do not contribute more than a 5-year old P4 HT. In addition to those you must not forget members like me with a higher contribution but who achieve it with some P4 HT (or worse!) in their "farms".

So, still thinking that 5-year old machines contribution is close to zero and that WCG can afford to ignore them?

Cheers. Jean.

old or new all of my pc crunch everyday 24/7 (start from pentium II until quad core) right now it seems we face the longest WU, 20++ hours (4580 - 4599)

wondering when all WCG member crunching FAAH, may be next year will be complete