Hi I have a new server that I am using to run a new low price book search being worked on. Once a month the the script retrieves and parses the info from 40+ book sites and it looks like its going to take several days each month. But the load warnings I get on cpanel show load averages: 3.63, 3.43, 3.12 for example. The machine is a 1.7 celeron with 1 gig ram. Should I have the programmer do something to limit the load and spread it out over more days?

~3-7 is high but it should be able to cope. Any thing above 10 is a cause for concern (that doesn't mean that it can't burst occasionally).