My initial tests on the T1000 and X2100 continue. I've got some basic applications up and running on the two boxes, and I'll post some more detailed thoughts at some later stage, but for now I want to talk about one of the most arbitrary tests - running the distributed.net client.

The distributed.net client is part of a distributed computing project, with the intention of working out the necessary computer power required to achieve certain tasks. For my tests, I concentrated purely on the RC5-72 project, which is looking for the encrypted message through brute force - that is, trying every combination until the one that matches is found. The test is entirely CPU bound; there's hardly any disk activity and very little RAM requirement.