Do the MACs normally do this?

I have recently moved over to the MAC community and have installed SETI. My Windows machine has a Centrino Duo 1.6 ghz processor with 2 gig of memory and my IMAC is a 2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 1GB of memory. I noticed on the MAC that I have 2 task running (I know that's standard with a duo processor), and it maintains 6 or more tasks downloaded ready for start. I thought there was a glitch, I stopped it from downloading new task until it completed all of the current task. I enabled new tasks and it immediately downloaded 6 task. On the Windows machine it never had more then 2 running task, maybe 1 awaiting upload and 1 or 2 being downloaded.

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This is OK. The BOINC client caches workunits, that you can crunch without connect to the internet. The BOINC client sort this out and do this automaticly for you.
There is a setting "connect every X days" in the general preferences, where you can setup this cache values. I recommend you to set this setting to 1 or 2 days, because you can cover server or network outages and did not connect imediatly after finishing a WU to the internet.
It could be, that your windows system is slower and so it did not cache as much as your Mac.

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Ok, Thanks I am guessing that downloading so many tasks were not standard. It completed out all of the tasks it downloaded and is now just running 2 tasks with no others cached. This I-MAC doesn't even seems to be bothered by SETI running all the time.

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Ok, Thanks I am guessing that downloading so many tasks were not standard. It completed out all of the tasks it downloaded and is now just running 2 tasks with no others cached. This I-MAC doesn't even seems to be bothered by SETI running all the time.

Since Mac OS X is a Unix based OS, I believe that the nice setting on the process is such that if you are trying to do something on the Mac, the SETI process will relinquish CPU cycles so that the task you are attempting will have enough not to suffer too much of a slowdown. I only occasionally have issues with older, single, slow CPUs and SETI causing a noticable delay, but this is rare. You can even set a maximum % of CPU for the BOINC client as well in the preferences if you wish.

With some of the recent server outages/slowdowns, I wish I had more work units downloaded at the time. I now keep about three days worth, which should keep most of my Macs busy through most of the outages.

Taras

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