Welcome Jay;
This forum section of <b>Tom's Hardware</b> is where we share comments about different programs that use spare unused PC power ... the inactive portion of your computer's available CPU capacity.
<A HREF="http

/library.thinkquest.org/C007645/english/0-definition.htm" target="_new">What is Distributed Computing?</A>
<A HREF="http

/www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/" target="_new">Broad view of avaiable Internet-based Distributed Computing Projects</A>
<b>mccoll1ns</b> gave you four good examples. As you can see from the other replies different folks have different preferences for what they decide to do with their spare unused PC power.
I choose to <A HREF="http

/www.grid.org/download/gold/download.htm" target="_new">Download the UD Agent</A>, install it and run it. <A HREF="http

/www.grid.org/projects/cancer/faq.htm" target="_new">Great explaination of one Cancer Research project</A>. The same concept is available for <A HREF="http

/www.grid.org/projects/smallpox/" target="_new"> Patriot Grid</A> research to limit the risk of terrorists use of Smallpox as a weapon of bioterror. Both use the same software, but you still have a choice to do one or the other or both. I choose to dedicate my spare unused PC power to cancer research.
One of the reasons was the great <A HREF="http

/forum.ud.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?category=1" target="_new">forum support</A> for the software and related projects.
Every working computer must be improved .... or replaced ...
<A HREF="http

/www.grid.org/services/teams/team.htm?id=510E6639-84A1-465D-A914-07BDB039E379" target="_new">Join the THG Team.</A>