I just installed Folding@home on my laptop (partially inspired by this post), and for me, the cost so far has been close to zero. FAH took me about 10 minutes to install, and my time isn’t very valuable right now (spring break). It used up to 75% of my CPU capacity and I didn’t notice a drop in my laptop’s performance, and I don’t pay for electricity at my dorm. As for the external cost of running it, I don’t know what percentage of my school’s electricity comes from fossil fuels, so it’s hard for me to estimate my FAH instance’s carbon footprint.
However, I’m worried that FAH will cause my laptop’s fan to wear out more quickly because the laptop is not designed to crunch numbers 24⁄7. I think it’s best if I have a plan for maintaining whatever hardware I run FAH on, so I’m going to stop running it for now.
[Edit: I’m more concerned about the risk of damaging my laptop now.]
I just installed Folding@home on my laptop (partially inspired by this post), and for me, the cost so far has been close to zero. FAH took me about 10 minutes to install, and my time isn’t very valuable right now (spring break). It used up to 75% of my CPU capacity and I didn’t notice a drop in my laptop’s performance, and I don’t pay for electricity at my dorm. As for the external cost of running it, I don’t know what percentage of my school’s electricity comes from fossil fuels, so it’s hard for me to estimate my FAH instance’s carbon footprint.
However, I’m worried that FAH will cause my laptop’s fan to wear out more quickly because the laptop is not designed to crunch numbers 24⁄7. I think it’s best if I have a plan for maintaining whatever hardware I run FAH on, so I’m going to stop running it for now.
[Edit: I’m more concerned about the risk of damaging my laptop now.]