Progress Thru Processors

Progress Thru Processors is a program for users to donate spare PC cycles. It is an initiative by Intel and GridRepublic, run through Facebook, which aims at encouraging users to donate the spare power of their computers and help with several research programs across the world.

The application is downloaded from the Facebook page, which you have to allow in your profile. After that, you go on Facebook to find a user name for the desktop application. If you don't have Facebook, another application that works with some of the same projects is BOINC.

Currently, the program can be used to help a variety of projects, including climateprediction, malariacontrol, rosetta@home, einstein@home, etc. By default, the application selects 3 projects and starts working on them automatically.

There are two views: basic and advanced. If you switch to the advanced view, you will see in detail everything the application is doing at all times. In the Transfers tab, you will see the material that is being downloaded and, in Statistics, you will see more information about the processing power that your computer is using, has used before, and an average per user and host.

You can schedule Progress Thru Processors to do work only at specific times, and you can tweak it to use less or more of your spare processing power. Although the application does a great job of staying unnoticed, you might want to not give it all of your spare processor cycles, since that will make your computer considerably slower at times. The scheduler is a great way of activating the application when you are not around.