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There's no need to drag your music collection between home and office. Give your iPod or Zune a rest and use our own Norm Chan's How To: Stream Your Music Library to Any Computer tutorial to bring your music to your office. The most time-consuming step (page 2) is importing your music into Netjukebox, so it's a perfect candidate for running it before you hit the hay or head to the office.
Compiling code and rendering graphics are among the most time-consuming tasks you can perform, so you shouldn't waste precious playtime by watching your computer munch program and video bits.
Start these processes before you clock out for the evening or as you start off to work. To make sure they run as quickly as possible, set your computer's power management for high performance and turn off other tasks that might interfere, such as Windows and application updates and other processes (such as the ones listed in this guide). If you're rendering graphics to an external drive or building a DVD or Blu-Ray disc, make sure your external drive is ready to roll and that you have a suitable blank disc in your drive.
You can "give something back" to the world by devoting unused computer cycles to a cause you support. You can help make scientific discoveries or fight deadly diseases, and there's no shortage of causes looking for your help. For a list of projects, see these Maximum PC stories: Facebook and Intel want You to Donate Your Spare Cycles, Freeware Files: Five Free Distributed Computing Projects for your Idle PC!, and New Distributed Computing Initiative Wants to Create Artificial Life. Need more options? See Wikipedia's list of distributed computing projects and Distributed Computing Info's list of projects.
Whether you're running apps that include built-in schedulers or need to start them yourself, you're going to want a way to log into your home PC from the office and keep an eye on what's going on. You could use commercial services like GotoMyPC, but if you're looking for a powerful freebie, check out the remote connection apps in our story The Ultimate Free Network Applications, Period. During your coffee breaks or lunch, you can stay in complete control of your PC at home.
Comments are closed on this article
millermax10
June 25, 2010 at 10:17am
I often take advantage of time I'm not using the computer to run anti-virus scans. It just is too much of a memory hog to use while I am awake. There's nothing like busting out your CPAP machine and sleeping easily knowing that you are getting work done during your slumber.
Kataco
February 12, 2010 at 11:30am
I don't get it, everywhere I read about remote connections to home computers I hear no mention of remote desktop. Why is that? I use it for all 3 of my computers, port forward/edit reg key and you're done . Am I missing something?
nekollx
February 12, 2010 at 10:31am
i prefer TeamViewer for remote login myself....
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Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
bbrinko
February 12, 2010 at 7:49am
Sleeping at work? What a concept.
Jess
Note from the Moderators:
Hey Jess. Make yourself another
account if you wish to participate here. If you do, you can stop
posting links like you were doing. Otherwise, that account will also be
blocked and you will be banned permanently.
quickone
February 12, 2010 at 5:51am
For those who are interested in the foling@home project MPC has a team, 2nd in the world, check them out in the forums http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=32
~~The difference between insanity and genius is merely succes~~
pyrite65
February 15, 2010 at 4:36pm
Thanks for the link, folding now.
No, I don't plunder ships, it a mineral...
QuakindudeMod
February 14, 2010 at 8:37pm
And if you DO chose to run the F@H client for our team, 11108, then please do not use Windows Automatic Updates. It will restart your computer without shutting down the client. Not only will you lose all that Folding time, you will more than likely have a corrupted work unit when you do fire it back up.
Just set Windows to download and notify you. That way, the updates are downloaded while you are sleeping, all you have to do is properly shut down your programs and let Windows install the updates.
*****MaximumPC Moderator. Report inappropriate/SPAM comments to
QuakindudeMod at Gmail--dot--com with a link. My personal comments do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of MaxPC or Future US*****
rohde782
February 12, 2010 at 2:00am
I think folding at home is by far the best use of my computer while away. Actually unless im doing someting intense i always have the nVidia client running. And my GTX280 OCX rocks it.
Spartacus
February 11, 2010 at 9:52pm
I appreciate the mention of folding, but you forgot the shamelessly plug your very own folding team.
williezzy
February 11, 2010 at 7:59pm
I read the title wrong, I thought it said "10 Best Ways to Use Your PC While You're Sleeping at Work".
Caboose
February 11, 2010 at 10:17pm
Space heater if you've got an nVidia GPU. Just fire up Folding@Home or something, and let it run on the GPU! You'll be nice and toasty warm!
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
snapple00
February 12, 2010 at 10:17am
He has an AMD CPU. It runs so slow that it actually cools itself, and the rest of the parts in the case, negating your space heater concept.
williezzy
February 12, 2010 at 2:12pm
I didn't think anyone else was actually going to post, I'm like never the first person to post on something. Hey "Snaple00" how did u know I had an AMD Anthlon? Wait, no wonder I can leave my pc on for days and it doesn't get hot, it just gets colder, like reverse temperature-ology.
snapple00
February 12, 2010 at 10:16pm
It was just a joke. I like AMD.
Too much Nvidia vs AMD around here lately.
