From PC World: 11 Uses for an Old PC
Distributed Computing.
Want to do a little good for humanity? How about dedicating your old PC to one of the various public distributed computing projects?
The best known is probably Folding@Home. Folding@Home uses computing resources from all over the world to help study protein folding, an essential element to understanding how many diseases operate. If your old PC has a fairly new graphics card, that hardware can often pitch in as well, and offer up even more computing resources. Other distributed computing ventures include:
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SETI@Home, where you can participate in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
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The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, which is dedicated to finding newMersene Prime Numbers.
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Plus many more based on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.
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Check out “12 Worthy Causes Seek Your Spare PC Cycles” for more.