# SETI@Home and BOINC **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 3, 2008, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seti-home-and-boinc/447922 "2008-05-03T20:22:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sir\_Dirx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b77776/32.png) [@Sir\_Dirx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_Dirx)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2008, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seti-home-and-boinc/447922/1 "2008-05-03T20:22:53Z")
So I got an email from SETI@Home the other day, asking me why I haven’t returned a work unit in years. Way back when the SETI@Home program switched to the new BOINC client, I quit running it. I didn’t like it at all. I could no longer let it run in the background without slowing down my computer, the new 3D graphics felt superfluous and actually made things harder to read, for me, and I encountered a lot of errors with the new program. It’s been about 3 years now. Has it gotten better? Will it be worth it to finally go back to SET@Home? Will it make my computer think extra hard when it comes on, or is it back to the pre-BOINC days of turning on and off quickly and painlessly? Are the graphics back to being simple and readily understandable? Can I let it run in the background full-time without noticeably affecting the performance of my computer? I’d love to have something more interesting than “flying stars” as my screen saver again, and I do miss the old SETI@Home. So, those of you still running it: what are your opinions? Should I go for it again? ---
**Author:** ![SiouxChief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@SiouxChief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiouxChief)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2008, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seti-home-and-boinc/447922/2 "2008-05-03T23:25:00Z")
Like you, I stopped using SETI when they switched to BOINC. However a few months ago I thought I’d give it a try again, and I’m glad I did. Although the graphics are still 3D, it seems that the issues that truly bugged me back then are gone, and I haven’t had any problems this time around. Well, I did have one problem: It seems by default, the new client defaults to running 100% of the time in the background…I could notice a slowdown in the repeat rate while typing. However, there is a configuration screen that let’s you change it…i set it to only run when the computer has been idle for 15 minutes, or whenever the screensaver kicks in. I have both the SETI@Home and Einstein@Home projects configured, but there are many more to choose from. The best part about running it now is that the computer I’m using is a LOT faster than the computer I used then, so it’s just churning out work units left and right. Go ahead, give it a try! ---
**Author:** ![Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2008, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seti-home-and-boinc/447922/3 "2008-05-03T23:35:33Z")
[Folding@home](http://folding.stanford.edu/) studies protein folding, and is probably a lot more useful that SETI@home. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2008, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seti-home-and-boinc/447922/4 "2008-05-04T01:37:16Z")
There’s lots of projects availble via BOINC, I’m running SETI on one of my boxes and Leiden Classical on the other. I had some problems with the Leiden one at first, but after changing a couple of settings, things cleared up nicely, and I don’t notice when/if it runs. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2008, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seti-home-and-boinc/447922/5 "2008-05-04T08:22:53Z")
[QUOTE=Jamaika a jamaikaiaké] [Folding@home](http://folding.stanford.edu/) studies protein folding, and is probably a lot more useful that SETI@home. [/QUOTE] I also came in to mention Folding@home. We do it on the PlayStation3. The process seems especially well suited to game computers, as makes it good use of the graphic capacities thereof. Folding@Home has a really nice screensaver of the moving proteins set against a globe with lights where there are cities and bigger lights where a computer is actually participating in the folding program. We shut it off when we are playing a game, though. ---
**Author:** ![SiouxChief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@SiouxChief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiouxChief)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2008, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seti-home-and-boinc/447922/6 "2008-05-05T17:18:43Z")
[QUOTE=Maastricht] I also came in to mention Folding@home. We do it on the PlayStation3. The process seems especially well suited to game computers, as makes it good use of the graphic capacities thereof. Folding@Home has a really nice screensaver of the moving proteins set against a globe with lights where there are cities and bigger lights where a computer is actually participating in the folding program. We shut it off when we are playing a game, though. [/QUOTE] I had no idea that you could run BOINC projects on the PS3. That is very cool! ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2008, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seti-home-and-boinc/447922/7 "2008-05-05T19:53:42Z")
Actually in the case of the Folding@Home project, the contribution through the PS3 has grown to about 80% of the whole project’s contribution, with well over 1 Petaflop worth of computing power and growing. Quite impressive! And the client looks real nice too. (this addition was written by Maastricht somewhat nerdier half) ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2008, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/seti-home-and-boinc/447922/8 "2008-05-05T20:17:49Z")
Been running SETI and Einstein via BOINC for about a year and a half now. Seems to work just fine; I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any performance issues due to it. In fact, a work unit on SETI seems to run in less than half the time now, compared to the original program.