i know that everyone CLAIMS that boinc only uses idle cpu cycles and that it does not interfere with other programs, but this is simply NOT TRUE! i routinely run computationaly intensive tasks which max out the cpu (like compiling octave from fink, like playing x-plane, like analyzing my data, like photoshopping my family pics, like video iChating with my mom), and invariably when i use either top in the terminal or activity monitor to look at how the cpu is splitting it's time, boinc is using some significantly greater than zero percentage, say around 10-40%. interestingly, when i kill boinc, the process of interest, the one that i care about most, goes to 100%, from the 60-90% that it was while boinc was running. all claims that boinc does not interfere with other processes are MISLEADING, b/c this only apply to tasks which are not computationaly intensive, like reading mail, word processing, sometimes surfing the web. can this possibly be fixed? it's been broken for YEARS! there must be a way to tell the process scheduler to execute a given process ONLY WHEN THE CPU WOULD OTHERWISE BE IDLING; not just to give it a lower priority. the nice/re-nice/set-priority stuff in unix land is simply NOT GOOD ENOUGH. google's now-discontinued compute feature of their toolbar claimed to do a better job, but i never had a chance to evaluate it. unfortunately, my comp. sci. classes in college never taught me enough operating system theory to make any useful suggestions, so all i can do here is RANT. sorry for that, but it is a much larger problem than i think most people, developers in particular, realize, and i really hope that it will be fixed someday, and that perhaps we can start a discussion here on how to go about doing it.

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BOINC doesn't crunch anything, so BOINC doesn't use any idle CPU time. It's the SCIENCE APPLICATIONS that take up the left over CPU time that other applications do NOT need.

Not sure how you checked what you checked, but as soon as you stop fiddling about with a CPU intensive app, to check what something else is doing, you'll see different results. At other times, the CPU may not be taken up completely.

Both PhotoSoup and video also take up a lot of video these days, where the GPU on your videocard is doing more of the calculations than your CPU is. For example: Try an old (2D only or minimalistic 3D) videocard and see the difference.

there must be a way to tell the process scheduler to execute a given process ONLY WHEN THE CPU WOULD OTHERWISE BE IDLING;

There is. It's in your preferences on the site: "Do work while computer is in use?" set to No, with some minutes added to when you want BOINC to start up the next application. Save changes on the site and Update BOINC through Projects tab, select project, Update button.

By the way, Windows is horrible at putting things to run at a notch above idle time. Linux is better suited for that. Blame Microsoft.

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