i would fold but it will increase my electricity bill by $50 each year that is why i don't do it. how do you folders deal with the money issue?

I only fold in the winter for that reason. I figure that most of the energy going into folding will get turned into heat, and so any energy used in folding would've been used by my heater anyways, so it kinda is 'free' folding...

If you use direct electric heating, then yes, during the heating season, folding is "free", unless you actually buy hardware to do it.

But direct electric heating is not good anyway. There are much more power efficient methods of heating. Air heat pump, ground heat pump for example. For each kWh of electricity you spend on heating, they would give some additional kWh drawn from the ground or outside air.

My honest opinion on folding is that if you want to make a difference then donate money. It just can't be very effective use of resources the way it's done now.

Hi,

I think the folks at Stanford want and need the information that each computer provides more than they need the money -- that's why they set it up the way they have. Besides, if they bought a super computer, it would use just as much power (if not more) in their building as it takes now.

I need to plug in my Kill-A-Watt again and see what the daily consumption is. But using your number of $50/year that is less than $0.14/day. And the heat gets turned down during the day (auto thermostat) and when I'm home, the office is the warmest room, so I do not need to turn up the heat in the whole house. So, it warms the office AND provides info on folded 3D protein molecules for the science experiments at Stanford.

[Edit: I am much more concerned about the energy used and the costs of the two major wars my country is waging. Almost half of the world's military dollars are spent by the USA -- 48%! So, to put it another way, the USA spends almost as much money on the military as the rest of the world combined! And for each gallon of gasoline used in Afghanistan, it costs us $400. That spending is non-productive; in fact at best it is non-productive, and at worst it is destructive. If we spent even a fraction of that on health care or wind turbines, then the money would have multiple benefits, and pay for itself.]

Well said, Neil.

I fold because it is a way to rationalize my need for bigger, better, smarter, etc. Oh, and I have two of my computers at work.