Help Menu
From Unofficial BOINC Wiki
[edit] General
And the last menu we have to talk about is the "Help" Menu. Just because it is the last menu does not mean that it is any less important than the other menus. As a matter of fact we should recognize the austere modesty of this menu that does not lord over those modules of code that are doing all the hard sweaty work to make the BOINC Manager a living and breathing entity.
[edit] Menu Overview
The Help Menu has only a couple of options, one of which is: "About BOINC Manager …" and that calls up a window that displays, among other information the version number display.
The second option opens up a Web Browser and displays the BOINC Web Site where the "Official" Documentation resides (Note: that we have all of that content here now too).
Of course, after saying that we we have to admit, modesty aside, that the single entry does not look that useful. But looks are deceiving. Because this single option is the way that you can confirm the exact model of the BOINC Client Software that you have installed on your computer. That does not sound like much does it? But many times it will turn out that the Version Number of the BOINC Client Software will be a necessary clue to a problem you are having operating the BOINC Client Software or a Science Application.
More than likely, the first question you will be asked will be "What version of the BOINC Client Software are you running?" The second question will be "And which Version of the Science Application are you using?". If you had dismissed this as an unnecessary luxury to add to the BOINC Manager, well, you were wrong.
The other Version Number you will be asked for is the Version Number of the Science Application, or Science Applications if it seems that there is more than one Project involved with your problem, that is running when the problem occurs.
In the case of the Apple Macintosh versions, the actual "About BOINC Manager ..." works only from the "BOINC" Menu where the "Quit" command usually resides.
[edit] Summary
The truth of the matter is that the Version Numbers are important in that you may, for one reason or another, be running a version of software that is known to cause problems.
Keep in mind that the version number of the BOINC Client Software is the only Version Number that is displayed.
The other information is, of course, the copyright and license information that all software products have (otherwise they could not hold their heads up in school when playing with the other children).
