Swap your spare computer power for very little

It's like SETI@Home, but without the science

By Lucy Sherriff • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 7th November 2000 11:31 GMT

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Do you fancy trading your unused computing power for the chance to be entered into a $4,000 prize draw.

If that's your price, Porivo Technologies has launched a scheme to use individual's spare computing capacity and put it to use on large-scale projects. These include identifying online bottlenecks and testing the performance of high volume web sites.

Anyone who fancies swapping their unused computing power for the chance of a $2,000 voucher to spend at BUY.com can download Porivo's PEER application from its homepage. There are two "runner up" prizes of $1000 each.

A couple of months ago, The Reg reported a project run by Distributed Computing thatplanned to buy excess capacity from computer users. It estimated that an average user could earn $10 per month by signing up.

After we ran the story a number of people suggested that this might just cover the increase in the users electricity bill. Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but a point well made.

In light of this the PEER arrangement sounds like a very good deal for Porivo. For four grand it gets access to massive parallel computing power, with the bill being footed by the PEER user in exchange for entry in a sweepstake.

Porivo says that a user's computer gets entered in the sweepstake once every fifteen minutes. So, the longer you donate your computing power to Porivo for, the better your chances of winning. ®