Hi. Only the grid techs can answer for sure, but I'd guess from the beta project stats that maybe around 300 or so computers are enabled for beta work (231 CPU days yesterday). Maybe 200ish or so people, depending on how many dual-cores and multi-system users? Not very many, anyway, out of the 20k or so total WCG BOINC users.

The points are awarded in the standard way for all WCG projects, based on your BOINC benchmarks and your reported CPU time to completion, averaged out by the quorum of 3. You should see the same points awarded as you're getting now.

I think the higher average points per hour reported in the project stats is just a side effect of the beta being BOINC-only. BOINC seems to award more points per hour for average-to-higher performance systems than the UD client, which seems to favor lower-power systems. And I suspect the beta participants tend to have higher power systems, which would raise the average anyway, even before the BOINC favoritism bonus.

As for what will be run, it's whatever the grid techs feel needs to be widely tested before being turned loose on the whole community. The beta program is new, so there's only been one batch of beta work sent out so far, which was the just-finished test of new FAAH graphics.

In general, I'd expect that pretty much any significant change to the science apps will get at least a little beta testing to be safe. And since new projects generally require totally new science apps, they should get quite a lot of testing. But beta work will be sporadic, with long periods without any in between system changes.

I like the feeling of helping the project above & beyond the normal crunching, and it's fun to be among the first to see software improvements and new projects. But you also have to be ready to accept and cope with bugs, including lockups, crashes, and lost work. Don't beta test on a machine you don't watch fairly closely.

But if you're up for it, we can certainly use some more help. The more of us there are helping to test (up to a point, anyway), the quicker and more thoroughly new stuff will get tested and put to work.