Using retail show floor hardware

[Maarten836]

Hi,
So I work at a electronics retailer. We want to use the 20+ laptops we have on display, as well as a couple of gaming pc's. This is just our store btw, there are 13 total. However I need a couple of question answered:
1. How is idle determined? If a program i.e. a browser is open, does that count?
2. How big of a hit is this on our network infrastructure*? Since our store is still opened we obviously need some our self for payments,orders,communications and general work (basicly browsing the website at 10 computers at the same time)
*I'm awaiting the answer if we have 10 Gigabit or just regular Gigabit.
3. Is there a way to have F@H started up at boot. Since it has to be able to get up and running without external input (aka employees turning it on every day)
4. Do you guys have any further tips and things I should know about. The more facts we can throw up, the higher the chance this is going to be realised.

If this is the wrong topic, please let me know where to move it to.
Please ignore any spelling mistakes, English ain't my native tongue.

[HaloJones]

1) similar to a screensaver. If a screensaver would activate, FAH will do the same thing
2) low. Units down are in the 10 of mb, uploads can be >100mb but not massive
3) yes, windows will alutorun at boot by default
4) laptops aren't ideal but we welcome every contribution. generally, a laptop has a lowish power cpu and isn't usually built with the necessary cooling for a high load. You could configure the cpu clients to use half the cpu but it all depends on what you want to do.

Finally, if yo plan to run this on company equipment, I strongly advise you to get written approval from someone very high up in the company - people have been fired in the past for running software like this on company equipment.

[foldy]

Be sure your equipment is ready for running several gaming PCs at full load. Each one will pull upto 500 watts from the wall.

[Neil-B]

A word of caution ... much as I love the idea (I so want a video of it all happening), having all of the laptops and the gaming PCs running their fans hard and cranking out heat may not help sell the devices as they will all sound very much louder than anything your competitors might have ... on the flip side you could use the noise and heat as a selling point and say they are tested with one of the most intensive compute packages around !!

[paulmd199]

4) laptops aren't ideal but we welcome every contribution. generally, a laptop has a lowish power cpu and isn't usually built with the necessary cooling for a high load. You could configure the cpu clients to use half the cpu but it all depends on what you want to do.

Yeah. Got an oldish dell inspiron laptop that is literally sitting on top of a box fan right now. I opened up the module cover to allow airflow. It is *still* hitting temperatures in the 80 degree centigrade range. Modern computers will downclock the processor to prevent it from frying itself to a crisp. Which is to say your laptops will probably not crash, but won't be running at full potential once the cpu hits 90 centigrade.

[Maarten836]

4) laptops aren't ideal but we welcome every contribution. generally, a laptop has a lowish power cpu and isn't usually built with the necessary cooling for a high load. You could configure the cpu clients to use half the cpu but it all depends on what you want to do.

Finally, if yo plan to run this on company equipment, I strongly advise you to get written approval from someone very high up in the company - people have been fired in the past for running software like this on company equipment.

I am aware of that yes. It's more that since they aren't really doing anything anyways. We might as well use for them for a good cause.
Of course we won't start until we get form of approval from hq. It's more that I needed to know a couple more things. To be able to request something like this.
Having all the pros/cons layed out makes convincing a whole lot easier

[Maarten836]

A word of caution ... much as I love the idea (I so want a video of it all happening), having all of the laptops and the gaming PCs running their fans hard and cranking out heat may not help sell the devices as they will all sound very much louder than anything your competitors might have ... on the flip side you could use the noise and heat as a selling point and say they are tested with one of the most intensive compute packages around !!

No worries, since the products we sell are identical to those of our competitors, that won't be an issue. As for additional noise and heat, due to Covid we barely have any customers in store and maybe 5% are actually there for laptops. As you said yourself explaining to our customers takes 1 minute and I think most of them would support the cause. And they'll know what to expect in terms of thermal output and usability. Since I'm talking about thermals anyway, I think the only real issue we might have would be thermal throttling. Which on the plus side would save a buck or two on heating so we'll probably be fine.
If everything comes through and we've a green light for this you will get a video

[Neil-B]

Good Luck .. and I await the video with great anticipation

[puuteknikko]

Actually you could tell a potential customer that you have stress tested the hardware with FAH