I'v just successfully installed the new client on one of my machines. First I made a back-up off the old boinc folder, just in case, then I went to the control panel and uninstalled the current client. Then I installed the new client in the old ones location (same drive and folder) - and it worked. No lost work units, and no lost work on the work units. Haven't looked around it so much yet.

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I successfully upgraded to 4.25 yesterday after uninstall of 4.19. No serious functional issues with 4.25 but i just decided to downgrade to 4.19 again. The 4.25 user interface is visually unpleasant and from the usability point of view simply an ugly, clumsy mess in comparison to the 4.19 design. A real big step back.

So i uninstalled 4.25 and reinstalled 4.19 again. 4.19 started right there where 4.25 left off. Good work!

Sorry, i admire the work of the developers in increasing functionality, but the work of the 'usability' designer is at least a mess. A nice and functional user interface with minimal fuss is 'a must' for a program thats constantly running on the desktop.

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Aloha, Uli

> Hmmmm not sure if this has been noticed yet.
>
>
>
> Anybody else see a 1200 - 1800 point drop in their Dhrystone scores?
>
>
>
> Dusty
>

Yes Dusty you are correct!!

Previous dhrystone reading - 1368 new one with 4.25 is 1368 BUT >>>

whetstone reading -- previous was 4142 new one 2767

---

Patience is a virtue.

...
> Sorry, i admire the work of the developers in increasing functionality, but
> the work of the 'usability' designer is at least a mess. A nice and
> functional user interface with minimal fuss is 'a must' for a program thats
> constantly running on the desktop.


I agree with you all through. The only good thing with CC4.25 is that you can run it as a service - which I do like!

The installation it self was not an issue. The only thing I run into was that I had to exit my 4.19. After that the installation went smooth. However, I do have some strange things happening at the moment. I've made some screen captures but I do not know where to send them - anyone, please let me know. All errors that occur and that is documented should be sent in to the dev. team, I guess…

The GUI as not good, the designers have some work to do! I'm thinking about re-install to my earlier version but being able to run it as a service make life more secure!

Happy crunching

---

Happy crunching

I share some of the remarks by other posters. I got V4.23 on one comp at home and while I don't really care for it, it kinda grows on you. And it also appears that BOINC will be losing two comps I have here at work since you have to have admin rights to install. I'll still be using 4.19 here at work until we are forced to upgrade to 4.25 at which time my two work comps will no longer be able to crunch for BOINC. :(

---

> Sorry, i admire the work of the developers in increasing functionality, but
> the work of the 'usability' designer is at least a mess. A nice and
> functional user interface with minimal fuss is 'a must' for a program thats
> constantly running on the desktop.
>

Well, if you've installed BOINC as a service, there's really no reason to let the BOINC Manager run all the time... Also, if you don't like the manager, you can use BoincView or another program to control BOINC.


BTW, v4.2x is not just a new installer and a new Manager, there is also some bug-fixes hidden under the hood of the core client.
Some of these are:
1; Bug in parsing of scheduler-reply, instead of getting info of new work and reporting results you gets "no scheduler responded" instead...
2; Problems for proxy-users to connect should be fixed.
3; For v4.13-users, bug in download-routine, probably responsible for 99% of all results reported as download-errors in SETI@home the last weeks, is fixed in v4.19 and v4.2x.
4; Already mentioned, bug-fix to benchmark.
5; Only asks for N days of work, not 2N as v4.1x did.
... and many other small fixes and changes...

I keep using the latest version and the only problem I've encountered is that sometimes the window comes up blank and does not display any info. This require a Boinc exit and re-open. This could be due to my W98se, as I've encountered this problem for a long time.

I agree with what appears to be the majority comment. The features are going in the right direction but the GUI is awful. I hate that blue box that eats up a quarter of my screen. The first customization I do when installing Windows is to get rid of its left hand box. The right click menu has to be brought back. It is the strongest feature of the Windows OS and should be kept.

QUESTION : I installed V4.25 on March 4th. Do I need to download the latest install?
I do wish the Dev would use Build No. so we can more easily judge how old our install actually is.

---

Boinc V7.2.42
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB, GTX470

I don't like the layout.

The left side of the screen is UGLY and SLOW to reach.
It was more efficient to rightclick on an item to do something. Now I do have to move the mouse pointer more often to click on another item, this is NO EFFICIENCY...
I mis the progressive bars.

Greetings,

---

> QUESTION : I installed V4.25 on March 4th. Do I need to download the latest
> install?
> I do wish the Dev would use Build No. so we can more easily judge how old our
> install actually is.

it is the same link and the same md5 checksum ;)

---

Plus points:

1. suspend or abort results
2. suspend project
3. error messages in red color

Screensaver tested and working, Win XP Pro SP2. Had to tell ZoneAlarm to accept connection.

Minus points:

1. no sorting function anymore, but when restarted the WU’s are sorted by date of deadline
2. the update of the tabs is done only with a timeframe of 5 seconds
3. Left pane too big
4. message tab is not cleaned after a while
5. disk usage not very informative

What the hell, just restarted my main machine and there are no more projects in BOINC Manager, no more work, nothing. What the F***is wrong here??? I also restarted my laptop, but it was ok. Any ideas?

---

<img src="http://www.boincstats.com/stats/banner.php?cpid=d2319b8f0ad14565556d0ba45b64e779">

I upgraded from 4.19 to 4.25 as advised: First uninstalled 4.19, then installed 4.25. 4.25 picked up from where 4.19 left off, and all my projects (SETI, CPDN, Predictor, Einstein and LHC) have been running smoothly for 24 hours. I uploaded finished results and downloaded new WUs without a problem, too.

I won't repeat the same complaints about the UI, I agree with all of them. I miss the context menus and progress bars most, and the task pane is visually unpleasant, one should be able to hide it. I presume the developers concentrated more on core functionality than the UI, and they have done a great job, but I really don't understand why existing UI features were removed. Because of cross-platform compatibility, maybe? Can anyone shed a light on this?

Anyway, the ability to suspend projects and WUs is a BIG plus for me, so I will stick with 4.25. Besides, BOINCView is here to help if I'm not satisfied with the GUI. Sooner or later a new project client will require 4.2x BOINC client.

There is one small missing bit that hasn't been mentioned so far: Whenever a new messagge arrived in the "Messages" tab, the icon in the SysTray used to change from a B to a B sub i, and when the "Messages" tab was clicked the icon would change back to B. That feature is gone now; there is no visual indication when a new message arrives, you have to check the Messages tab manually to see if everything is OK. I was quite used to see that B sub i icon every now and then, now it's a bit awkward to see the same icon all the time, it makes me feel that nothing is happening! :-) I wish that feature would come back, too... Maybe it won't due to cross-platform compatibility? Any comments?

And one final question: When a result is aborted, is that communicated to the server so that it can send out the same WU to someone else (if that's needed, of course!) before the result is due?

I installed it, with 1 error. It required a reboot. After reboot, error on startup. Had to reinstall. The program feels incomplete. The menus are slow, switching tabs takes forever, even on a P4.

Well, given all this talk, I think I'll be sticking with 4.19 for the forseeable future.

(I have every release since 3.19. I wonder if there's a computer archaeology movement in the works?)

At any rate, to add to the discussion, is the manager and/or core client still open source? I imagine that could, potentially, go a long way to helping address issues such as features that no one likes, or would like to see, and the size of the installation executable.

That's my two cents' worth, anyway. Pity I know nothing about programming.

[/url]

> Hmmmm not sure if this has been noticed yet.
>
>
>
> Anybody else see a 1200 - 1800 point drop in their Dhrystone scores?
>
>
>
> Dusty
>

Mine was about 1469 Whetstone 2055 Dhrystone
It is now ---- 1424 Whetstone 1238 Dhrystone

3.2 GHz Hyperthreaded

---

Yes as stated in nearly every thread about 4.2x the benchmarks in the Windows client have been fixed so that the benchmarking is not short circuited by the compiler. The numbers you now see should reflect 'real' numbers. My 3.2GHz HT with 1GB PC3200 RAM is;

Measured floating point speed 1359.5 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 1718.69 million ops/sec

---

Paul
(S@H1 8888)
And proud of it!

I install v4.25 at home computer 01:30 09.marth.2005.
For 20 h - crash 1 WU SETI, Predictor continue calculatin after 102% and I uninstall - return to 4.19!!!

As Ulrich Metzner, JavaPersona, MattDavis, Stanislav Sokolov ... I dont like GUI BOINCmanager!
- The BIG blue panel;
- Absence progress bar;
- No context menu only "the BIG, blue tool typ panel"
- Can't sort and hide columns...

---

> > Is anyone running 4.25 on Windows 98SE?
> >
> I'll answer my own question. I install 4.25 after uninstalling 4.19 and the
> exiting WUs picked up running. A new WU downloaded. It hasn't had to do an
> upload yet but there doesn't appear to be any problems.
>
i have one PC on win98SE at the moment, it has been running 4.25 since the official release without problems. it actually fixed a few problems - the host liked to attach to SETI a 2nd time with every reboot. There were 2 attachments when the install started, but 4.25 corrected that; i hope that 4.25 has repaired that for good.
all else appears fine on it, no problems on the install with any of my hosts.

Thanks ROM!

Micah

---

S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club

> 1) Unable to sort the individual columns - was a very heavily-used feature,
> especially when sorting by deadline and progress to see where to give
> priority
> 2) The offending sidebar stealing a lot of screen real estate - come on, even
> Microsoft allows hiding the sidebar in Explorer...
> 3) Graphical prograss indicators are gone - they were invaluable for getting
> an overview of the progress situation at a glance - now I have to wade though
> a jumble of numbers...
> 4) Disk usage diagrams are gone! Especially disconserting is the absence of
> persantage status from the total allocated BOINC space.
> 5) Column widths are not saved across sessions. Frustrating.
> 6) Context sensitive menues are gone - I understand that the sidebar has
> overtaken that role, but menues are more intuitive and require less clicks to
> have the job done - right-click an entry, then release the button to activate
> an option; now you have to click the entry, move the mouse and then click the
> option.

I'm agreeing with all of these points. These features are so important to me that I will have to continue to use v4.19 until they are fixed.

I have had 4.25 running on all 3 of my boxes since the developmental stage without any hicups. I run 1 on Windows ME and 2 on Windows XP SP2. 4.24 seemed to run especially slow, but since upgrading to 4.25 the WU's seem to be right close to where they were originally. They all run at approx 1 hour past the "estimated completion" time.


Have A great Day And A better Tomorrow!

Regards,

Rocky

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www.boincsynergy.com