I would suggest that you hook up these computers to SETI, plus at least one back up project. There would be lots of teaching opportunities just in selecting the backups, plus monitoring the ongoing work on the other projects. You could even consider rotating between projects, maybe to follow other learning activities underway in the school.

SETI needs more crunchers, when everything works well. The other projects are much the same. At any given moment there is somebody out there that could use extra CPUs.

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With all of these bandwidth problems, would it be wise to introduce a school full of computers to SETI? I've gotten the green light from the school principal and now she is talking to the tech guy that manages what happens to those machines.

It's the smallest school in the district, 50 machines if that, but will that hurt SETI in any measurable way?

And... if, by some strange event (this kind of thing never happens to me), I got the OK to introduce more schools (at least 200 per school, district total of maybe 1,500), should I hold off until you get that fiber link?

On another note... I get so jealous when I see people write "100 units left. I should be good for another half a day." I know what I'm doing if I hit the powerball... You think SETI will work with those Tesla machines? I'd just love to be able to say "100 units left. Should last until the end of this sentence."

The problem isn't with SETI@Home per se. The problem is with our perception.

It's human nature. Nobody notices when things go right, just the exceptions, and really, just us, not the machines themselves. BOINC and SETI have a long history of getting back from troubles.

That's why I have trouble with all the "doom and gloom" when things aren't running flawlessly -- because flaws always get accomodated.

If you want to be friendly, set these machines up with a small cache (1/2 day?) and set them up with two or three projects, chosen for interest to students.

That way, they won't accumulate 1000's of work units and then hammer on the servers.

I wouldn't use optimized apps unless you're willing to potentially visit every machine.

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I have to visit every machine anyway to install. I have two flash drives so I can work on two machines at once, or have someone else help me. A staff member will be present for every install, for their purposes and mine.

My planned order is this:

1. Have staff member disable Fortres 101 to allow system changes
2. Insert flash drive
3. Install BOINC while simultaniously running CPU-Z. I should have to run CPU-Z once in the computer lab as they are all identical in every way.
4. Reboot if nessesary
5. Kill BOINC
6. Run batch file to attach then run BOINC
7. See step 5
8. Run optimized installer.
9. Run BOINC, leave manager open until I leave room, go on to next computer.

That can be reasonably done in 5 minutes per machine, right?