Hi!

I'm a brand new member from Germany (with american roots) and therefore I still need to learn a lot of things concerning SETI@Home. One thing is this Credit-Thing. I couldn't find any information about it. What are these credits good for? Will we get invited if E.T. decides to visit us (and if we have enough credits so far)? ;-)

Couldn't find any information? This topic comes up at least once per quarter year.

Credits are largely meaningless. You can use them to compare your computer against other people's, but the comparison is rather moot considering the large differences in CPU architecture, the use of optimized applications, and you're supposed to be able to compare cross-project but even that has become meaningless as difference projects hand out different amounts of credit per workunit.

Some people use them as a way to look for deficiencies in their hardware. For example, if your system normally gets about a 1,200 Recent Average Credit (RAC), and for some reason you're only getting 800 RAC, you can start investigating the reason for the slow-down.