Computer Screen Savers Idle power put to use

by David Orenstein freelance writer

When you leave your desk to see patients, to grab lunch, or to go home, you can continue to practice medicine. New screen savers will let your PC carry on the good fight against disease while its processor would otherwise be idle.

For instance, to help fight HIV, visit www.fightaidsathome.org. Or, if you’d rather devote your PC to fighting cancer, try Oxford University’s “Screensaver Lifesaver” at www.chem.ox.ac.uk/curecancer.html. Both screen savers make use of the spare processing power of thousands of PCs to accomplish what otherwise would require a supercomputer.

The “distributed processing” technology at play first was brought to the masses by SETI@home, which uses its volunteers’ PCs to analyze radio signals from space. Their goal is to detect patterns that could be produced only by extraterrestrial intelligence.

One would think people would be more interested in joining closer-to-home efforts, namely, to fight disease. The cancer screen saver is off to a great start. As of May 30, more than 415,000 people had signed up. As of June 18, the HIV screen saver had signed up 27,980 computers.

The HIV screen saver on your computer processes the calculations necessary to determine whether the molecules of a potential drug would dock with the many mutant strains of HIV. The software, which actually will run any time your CPU is idle—not only as a screen saver—crunches the numbers and sends them to the lab of Dr Arthur Olson at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. In screen saver mode, the software appears as a colorful series of floating bar charts that depicts how the software is using your computer’s resources. It uses a lot. It needs more than 90 MB of memory and at least a 166 Mhz Pentium.

The cancer-fighting Screensaver Lifesaver does much the same, but the graphics are more informative. The cancer screen saver shows a picture of the drug molecule being tested and the protein it targets. The molecule is not simply a pretty bunch of balls and bars, either. Each atom is color coded so you know the chemical structure of the molecule. For hard-core fans of molecular biology, the name of molecule and target proteins is displayed, as well. Despite the additional detail and more engaging graphics, the screen saver is less power hungry. It wants only a Pentium and 48 MB of RAM.

Whichever one you choose to run, first test it on a machine at the office. If it works without hindering other software, then why not use it? What is especially nice about these screen savers is that because they put your PC to work for a good cause, they are not pointless, wasteful software toys like other screen savers. After all, if you’re going to be away from your PC for so long that your screen might burn in, then you won’t be there to appreciate the flying toasters or floating windows of your screen saver, anyway. Frankly, why use a screen saver if it isn’t doing something as noble as supporting life-and-death research?

Other than these screen savers that give researchers supercomputing power at a fraction of the cost, another screen saver actually promotes health. It is called turning the monitor off when you leave your PC for a long time. By conserving electricity, you reduce the need to burn coal or oil at power plants. That would reduce the air pollution that hinders healthy breathing. And, hey, it saves you some money, too.

David Orenstein is a technology and business writer in Silicon Valley. If you'd like to learn more about a certain computer topic, e-mail him at davealli@home.com.