I agree that when crunching on a laptop backups are ESSENTIAL!! I have had several hard drive crashes over the years on my laptops, on my desktops too but that is because I often used recycled hard drives from older machines in my desktops.

Wow. I still find it mildly shocking that so many people fork out so much cash just to have more machines to crunch work units. I have one machine. Well, 2, but the other one doesn't work. I always only have just one working computer. I don't even own a laptop yet. I just have no need for more than one. *sigh*

On a side note, if any of ya wanna still put that money to good use, lemme know. I take donations for my Help Me Get Out Of Debt Fund. :)

... Hi Brink ... long time.

After hobby comes obsession.

Coleslaw-

I really appreciate this information.

I am really glad that you raised the question of babysitting. I have been on a project for quite some time that has required from me way too much attention. I think if we expect many people to do this, then we are only going to get really technically adept people, and that is not in my opinion a good approach.

I have raised exactly this question at a very high level and been told that for the most part, "it just works" should be a guiding principle.

You know, I was thinking about this business of crunching as a hobby.

Daniel Lombrano of the T4T project at CERN just gave us links to the 2nd Citizen Cyberscience Summit,.

This was three days mostly at University College London, practically all BOINC, quite a serious business. Universities and other institutions really do value our work.

Probably the best project in showing themselves to the public is the WCG project CEP2. The project with the highest reach is T4T in physics at CERN. And, in between, just tons of very important science going on.

My first project, a few years ago, was a Cancer project running on U.D. at Oxford University. It really did change my life.

I do have quite a few computers; but none were bought with crunching as their main focus:my aging desktop (being replaced with the new machine); my wife's desktop; my 17" work laptop, my dying 17" work laptop, still good for some crunching; my 14" travel laptop; my well equipped netbook for testing software; and, oh yes, one extra 17" laptop.

I even have business cards made up with the WCG and BOINC URL's to hand out to people who express interest in volunteer computing.

This work and my interest in the LHC at CERN were the twin motivators for my beginning the ScienceSprings blog.

So, I am quite happy at 70 to be engaged in what I consider to be a very worthwhile activity.