Tuesday. September 1st. 2015 @2.08 PM. [GMT-0800]. Day of year = 244

Hi,
I have a brand new win 7 Pro 64-bit PC. I installed BOINC on 7/31/15 and it runs perfectly. I tested for CPU overheating before getting carried away by trying to be the number crunching "savior of the universe," :) and settled on a conservative 25% work load, and my SETI Work done after just 30 days is 67076. What the "67076" IS; I'm clueless? Megabytes of data crunched? number of data pages? number of calculations? Who knows? I see nothing about it. It would be nice to know what I did that may be worthwhile?

Now I see, after 1 month, a new version of BOINC is available. Do I HAVE to "upgrade." What happens if I don't? In past years I've had serious problems with "improved versions" of software.

In searching on the word "upgrade" I've seen several posts on the disaster when a few running Win 7 jumped up to Win 10 and how everything got screwed up. It just shows, I think, how a good program that I think BOINC is, can go from working fine on one operating system and bad on another.

If I were to take the bait and download 7.6.6 where would it go on my PC? I assume I would just double click it once I find it and pray for the best? I'm worried that, as has happened with other software, problems will arise, and I do NOT want problems just in order to say I have the latest and greatest BOINC ever. BTW, what does BOINC stand for? All I can think of, maybe, is "Bad Odor IN Corporated" or some such? :) I dunno? I've not seen it defined anywhere. Also, I see reference to "gpu's" here and there. What are they? "general purpose units?" What are they and why should I care?

I've done a search on "updates" and found nothing describing the up-date procedure? It has to be somewhere, but where? I would think that the subject of up-dating should have a whole separate group dedicated to it. Why not?

I'm glad that I'm helping SETI by running my PC 24/7 on its behalf but do not want to get into a "my up-date does not work" nightmare as has happened, on occasion, in years past with some software.

Advice and help on "up-grading" is appreciated. :)

Thank you...

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River Song (aka Linda Latte on planet Earth)
"Happy I-Phone girl on the GO GO GO"

What the "67076" IS;

At BOINC projects you're paid for your time in credits. They have no value on this world. They're merely there to show you your machine is making progress. The RAC (recent average credit) shows how your machine is doing. When it goes down rapidly, always check the machine as it'll most probably is returning garbage only.

Do I HAVE to "upgrade."

BOINC development doesn't stand still. Bugs get squashed, bugs get added. New functions get added. Old ones are let go. Once in a while the whole program gets rewritten, or the menus shaken up.

No, you don't have to upgrade. Nothing happens if you don't.
Although, wait long enough on an older version and there may be projects that won't be sending any more work to these older clients. Not at Seti though, think even some very ancient 3.19 clients, and otherwise 4.48s are still getting work here.

If I were to take the bait and download 7.6.6 where would it go on my PC?

Well, first off, the latest newest version since this morning is 7.6.9
You'd just download the installer to a place on your hard drive, then when the download is finished, start it. Follow the installer, if all is well you don't have to change anything, and it'll uninstall the previous BOINC version for you, then install the newest, before auto-starting and continuing the work from where it left off before updating. There's really nothing to it.

BTW, what does BOINC stand for?

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

Also, I see reference to "gpu's" here and there. What are they?

Graphics Processing Unit, or the graphics chip on your videocard. You're confusing it with the latest newest bestest thing, which are GPGPU, General Purpose Graphics Processing Units, which don't just have hardware on board to render 2D and 3D graphics, but can also do floating point calculations. And that at a speed much greater than a CPU (Central Processing Unit) can do.

I've done a search on "updates" and found nothing describing the up-date procedure? It has to be somewhere, but where? I would think that the subject of up-dating should have a whole separate group dedicated to it. Why not?

Double-click on the installer, follow the prompts. There is really nothing to it. All automated.

Only when it throws an error, usually on uninstalling the previous version, do you need help. And then you can look up those at the BOINC FAQ Service (hopelessly outdated in places, but I just do not have the time anymore to work on it).

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Thank you and thank you, Ageless. I will work up my courage and try to be brave. :)

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River Song (aka Linda Latte on planet Earth)
"Happy I-Phone girl on the GO GO GO"