Present United Devices (UD) design issues
This page documents some of the limitations of the present version (3.0) of the United Devices (UD) software, and what would be excellent changes and additions to future versions:
- Why is the CPU Throttle stored in the registry, only for current user?
- UD.SCR should check that UD.EXE is already active. If it is, it should show the progress. If it is not active, activate it and show the results. This alleviates problems when running the user WCG screen saver when WCG is active as a service.
- There should be a screen saver option to show only a generic window, with % complete results, the task name and whether the work unit is actually processing (heartbeat). This would help in finding those machines which appear to be crunching but aren’t. This would also allow for maximum crunching as no CPU is wasted drawing the work unit progress graphics, but still have some task monitoring.
- The software should separate the user changeable settings (screen saver, CPU throttle, future additions) from the security config (login info & machine ID, proxy).
- How about a log file, kept in the local WCG install folder, recording all the work units done, work unit type, time taken…
- Allow for a configuration file to be used in deployment. It would contain username, password (encrypted), a flag indicating user already in WCG.
- The user settings should be in a separate & editable file (like the Eudora.ini, or an XML-style configuration file), still in the WCG folder.
- Allow for more installation options:
- (x) Install for this user, with link in user’s startup folder
- (x) Install for all users, with link in All Users startup folder
- (x) Install as a Windows service (no startup link, but allow monitoring in system tray)
- [x] Run WCG only when screen saver active (this options affects all three above)
- Incorporate more of the user requests from the WCG website (dual-core support, deployment issues).
- Can’t easily deploy via an image. There’s no way to customize the software except by hand on each machine.
Email the author: Peter Schepers | Last updated: Dec 6, 2006