JDWTopGuy's Journal: Why run distributed.net?

A friend recently (today, actually) asked me why I run distributed.net. Personally I think he's just ticked that both my "new" systems, specs over there in my bio, beat the 2.53 Ghz P4 system he had (until recently) in RC5-72. I get 4.5 million keys/sec on my athlon, 6.8 million keys/sec on my powerbook. He got 3.4 million keys/sec.

However, it is an interesting question: why run distributed.net? Well here's what I've come up with:

1. To show off. As I said, my 667 Mhz powerbook gets double the keys/sec of a 2.53 Ghz P4, my $200 Athlon XP box also beats it.

2. To try and win the $1,000. I could use $1K.

3. Pure geekdom. I run dnetc because I think it's a fun thing to do, and who doesn't like to be good at something? Of course I'm nowhere near the top of the list, mainly because I can't run it all the time. I could get about 11 million keys/sec if I ran both my athlon box and my powerbook at the same time, but then I wouldn't be able to do anything on the computer.

P.S. If you run dnetc, post below which project you prefer, what you run it on, and what speeds you get. :-) And of course, what's your reason?