Yes, when the techs want a result back quickly, they assign an artificially short deadline.

If they aren't bothered, they assign a normal deadline.

Of course, sometimes they make a mistake. But we don't like to talk about that :-)

Absolutely. The credit is the last thought to consider. The more tests by the more devices the better. AND, as I wrote in the main beta test thread for this round, the extra copy is not likely to come back before yours... no manual interventions needed or risks of "Too Late", an outside chance I reckon this time.

I have never seen a WU that has interrupted a running WU to sneak to the front of the line. On my Phenom, I had a Beta that was not picked up to start before another WU that had already been downloaded. I aborted the ready to start WU until the Beta was picked up (should have just suspended them). Which was last. Hence the posting.

On my single core machine the job started directly after downloading as you can see after suspending (Waiting to run) another job that had a process time of only 1'34''.

World Community Grid 4-12-2008 18:15:04 Finished download of wcgrid_beta6_6.14_windows_intelx86
World Community Grid 4-12-2008 18:15:05 Starting BETA_E000370_118A_001e8z180_2
World Community Grid 4-12-2008 18:15:05 Starting task BETA_E000370_118A_001e8z180_2 using beta6 version 614
World Community Grid 4-12-2008 18:43:09 [checkpoint_debug] result BETA_E000370_118A_001e8z180_2 checkpointed

I don't know what the experts think, but I usually manually start immediately any short-dated WUs that I notice in my job queues. Because i have ticked "Leave applications in memory while suspended" in my BOINC Advanced >> Preferences settings, I do not lose any crunching time when the suspended tasks resume, unless I shut down and restart BOINC or the computer.
* To manually start specific tasks, in Advanced View >> Tasks, select the running tasks that you want to pre-empt, plus all tasks in the queue that are above the one(s) you want to start. (You can select multiple tasks in the way that is standard on your sytem, eg Cntrl+Left-click, Shift+Left-click). Then click the Suspend button. When the priority tasks are Running. click Resume.
Don't forget to click Resume, as suspended tasks prevent BOINC from downloading new work.
The queue should be sorted in descending order of Progress. To sort on Progress, click the Progress heading, and again if you need to reverse the sort.
If you restart the system, you will have to repeat this process.
If there is not enough memory left after holding the suspended WUs, you will not be able to start new ones.
* For these Beta WUs, I will probably click Projects >> Update soon after they upload, unless you tell me that the WCG servers won't cope with the extra requests.