There are a few benefits.

1. If your computer only donates 1 hour per day, then it should take about 6 days to complete a task instead of 10 days. Not everyone on the grid keeps their machines up 24/7.

2. If you have a PII (yes i said it PII...I actually have one contributing time) it will cut down the time needed to run the work units by 40%. When tasks did take 2 days to complete, now they complete in a little more than a day.

3. If for some reason your computer has an error, towards the end of the work unit, it would only be 6 hours of computational time used instead of 10. Note: We are try to eliminate all errors of course caused by the code, but some errors are caused by member machines also.

4....there are more minor ones.

HeadCase is right on the how the work units are split. 30 total hours of work is still being done, just by 5 different computers instead of only 3.

-Uplinger

I've got à 1.6 Ghz Atom working right now But it isn't that slow. It's only approximatly 3.5 times slower than my C2Duo @ 2Ghz... It's better than nothing... But of course, it takes time to complete a task !

Note: The PII is used to help figure out minimum requirements for projects :) But it chugs along nicely...it's the little train that could...

-Uplinger

Okay here's my perspective:

Someone has only a PII and uses it to read/write mail and browse a bit, albeit slow. Does this 7 hours a week. 95% of the CPU time is unused, finds out about WCG, so the owner volunteers to donate the spare time whilst the computer is on.

WCG tests for these cycles so even the smallest can contribute FOR the smallest may talk to the one with a Quad, telling about this Nutritious Rice program and hardly noticing. The Quad guy thinks, well if that PII can do that my Quad can do too and contributes.

Think what I said is clear. WE have won another to spread to word. No one was hurt, no PII was ditched, for it still was USED and adequate from the users perspective.