SETI - the search for ALIENS!

[iChief]

Has anyone else, like me, downloaded the SETI@home screensaver? And has anyone else noticed how processor hungry it is? Within days of installing it I noticed the base of my iBook was overheating like a m*therf#@ker!! To say I was alarmed is an understatement! I've had my baby for a little under a year and it has never overheated - I heard the fan come on TWICE in the space of one day for crissakes! That might not sound so bad until you realize I didn't even know the fan existed until this happened!
I mean I'm all for saving the plantet and all but NOT at the expense of my beloved iBook!
I had to uninstall in the end and *phew* relief! It has fixed the problem of the over heating. That was a palaver in itself but that's a whole other story.

 

[Littleodie914]

Has anyone else, like me, downloaded the SETI@home screensaver? And has anyone else noticed how processor hungry it is? Within days of installing it I noticed the base of my iBook was overheating like a m*therf#@ker!! To say I was alarmed is an understatement! I've had my baby for a little under a year and it has never overheated - I heard the fan come on TWICE in the space of one day for crissakes! That might not sound so bad until you realize I didn't even know the fan existed until this happened!
I mean I'm all for saving the plantet and all but NOT at the expense of my beloved iBook!
I had to uninstall in the end and *phew* relief! It has fixed the problem of the over heating. That was a palaver in itself but that's a whole other story.

Yea, that's basically the point of SETI@home and Folding@home. Data is sent to your computer in packets, and its your computers job to do the calculations and send the "answers" back to wherever the data came from. So naturally, people want these processes to take up as much processing power as possible, so the answers are calculated quickly.

 

[iChief]

I know that's the point of SETI but I didn't realize it was SO processor heavy. I have it on the Windows machine I use at work so I don't feel so guilty about trashing it from my iBook. I don't care if it burns out the work PC but I DO care if it burns out my poor little iBook. It has made me appreciate my iBook all the more now that it's running properly again. I realize I don't have to worry about having iTunes, iChat open and check my emails and write a Word document at the same time. I notice you've got an iMac G5, I'm sure that makes short work of the SETI packets - I'm envious!