On 17 Feb 2001, at 20:06, Nathan Russell wrote:

> This reminded me of a discussion I had with a friend.
> 
> "Ever looked into Prime95?"
[... snip ...]
> "I thought Prime95 was just for overclocking and stuff."
> 
> Frankly, it upsets me when I read a magazine article that mentions
> Prime95 solely in the context of testing recently OCed machines.  

I know what you mean ... but the fact is there's no such thing as 
_bad_ publicity.

However I do wonder how much of the recycling of expired exponents is 
due to people picking up Prime95 just to run a hardware test. The 
proportion of LL test assignments which complete seems to be dropping 
recently. I wonder if there is some problem where the program goes & 
picks up an assignment straight away on installation - would it be 
too much of a deterrent to normal users if it asked a straightforward 
question "Do you want to run a full self-test?" before anything else, 
& if so leave the setup of PrimeNet username etc. till later?

BTW I think it's a Darned Good Idea (tm) to run a full selftest on 
_any_ new system, and indeed periodically (say every year) on any 
system which is in continuing use, whether or not it's overclocked.


Regards
Brian Beesley
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