Dear fj

On the stats page, the number of devices refers to the number of devices which have returned at least one result. The number of total devices which have been registered in the last 5 months (since we launched) is actually around 120,000. However, only 100,000+ of those have returned at least one result since the start of the program.

Our current policy is to call an “active device” one that has returned at least one result since the start of the program. Officially the policy is 180 days. In the future, we will be changing that to something less than 180 days, perhaps 30 or 60 days. At this time, we continue to receive about 30 first results per week from devices that were registered as far back as November of 2004. We have no idea why some of these are so late. Do people turn their PC off for 5 months?

World Community Grid stats are consistent with our partner grid, Grid.org. They have 1.2 million members but their CPU remains flat. And although we only have 5% of Grid.org membership, for the Human Proteome Folding project, World Community Grid harvests approximately 50% as much CPU as Grid.org but has processed more results.

We are working hard on getting media exposure but one can only do so much and it usually has to be tied to eye-catching events, such as crossing 100,000 devices. Most of our growth comes from current members encouraging their friends and colleagues to join World Community Grid. Through our partnership program, we are also working with Universities and Companies to have them encourage people in their organizations to participate in World Community Grid.