This morning my town had a series of small power cuts between 05·00 and 06·00 hours, these were so short that the incandescent light bulb on my desk light didn't go out, only flicker. My Computer did reboot on the first two occasions but then on the third occasion wouldn't do anything, I 'phoned the local computer repair people at around 09·00, who got back to me later in the day as they had been inundated with calls on the same matter. My computer rebooted at about 12·00, apparently others are still not re-started.
Having given the background here's my question, as I needed to stay in email contact with a number of people today, would it be worthwhile buying a laptop, if so which one? Morgans flyer which came this morning has Toshiba's at prices starting at £328·99. Although I seem to remember reading somewhere that Mesh laptop's fitted GNU/Linux better, anyone any suggestions, or ideas of what to avoid? I'd want toput Slackware 11 onto it.
On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 04:45:06PM +0100, J.R. Seago wrote:
This morning my town had a series of small power cuts between 05·00 and 06·00 hours, these were so short that the incandescent light bulb on my desk light didn't go out, only flicker. My Computer did reboot on the first two occasions but then on the third occasion wouldn't do anything, I 'phoned the local computer repair people at around 09·00, who got back to me later in the day as they had been inundated with calls on the same matter. My computer rebooted at about 12·00, apparently others are still not re-started.
I'm not clear; did your local computer repair people do something that meant your computer was functional by 12:00, or did it just magically come back?
Having given the background here's my question, as I needed to stay in email contact with a number of people today, would it be worthwhile buying a laptop, if so which one? Morgans flyer which came this morning has Toshiba's at prices starting at £328·99. Although I seem to remember reading somewhere that Mesh laptop's fitted GNU/Linux better, anyone any suggestions, or ideas of what to avoid? I'd want toput Slackware 11 onto it.
As a cheaper solution, would perhaps a decent surge protector or even UPS maybe do what you want? I picked up a £25 Belkin UPS from eBuyer last year and it's kept my machine up through various brownouts and power outages. Of course it still doesn't protect me from my own stupidity (like the time I knocked the power button while fiddling with cables under the desk).
J.
On 10-Apr-07 15:45:06, J.R. Seago wrote:
This morning my town had a series of small power cuts between 05·00 and 06·00 hours, these were so short that the incandescent light bulb on my desk light didn't go out, only flicker. My Computer did reboot on the first two occasions but then on the third occasion wouldn't do anything, I 'phoned the local computer repair people at around 09·00, who got back to me later in the day as they had been inundated with calls on the same matter. My computer rebooted at about 12·00, apparently others are still not re-started.
I can;t offer informed advice about which laptop to go for (indeed I'll be interested to see what others say).
But, on the power-cut question, I think this is something to take serious precautions against if it's likely to happen at all often.
Where I live, this kind of repeated very brief cut happens on average every few weeks (but they tend to bunch as well, so if you get one on one day you may get another on the same day or within a few days).
Because of the disruption to a desktop when this happens (reboot and prolonged fsck etc.) I early on put my desktops onto a UPS. For other reasons I'm glad I did!
While a laptop will stay up during a power cut (by virtue of its battery), any computer (desktop or latop) is vulnerable to extreme voltages which may accompany the mains coming back on. And I lost a laptop (motherboard zapped) one day when four very brief cuts came in quick succession. The desktops were OK, since they were on the other side of the UPS, but the laptop (simply plugged into the mains) was killed. Punishment for complacency!
So now, I have the UP itself buffered from the mains by a surge-suppressor cable, so that's 2 layers (including UPS). And I also have 2 layers for the laptop (spike suppressor adaptor plugged into a surge-suppressor extension cable.
So far, I've survived the subsequent events! I strongly recommend taking this kind of precaution.
One puzzle: Given the prevalence of dodgy mains power in the Fens (and no doubt elsewhere), I'm surprised there are so few outlets for UPS kit. PC World don't seem to hold them any more, and the only place I know that does (World of Computers ar Milton, near Cambridge) only sells APC, which do not supply monitoring and control software for Linux (nearest is Apple OS X), whereas Belkin do (but my old Belkin UPS is getting fragile now).
Best wishes, and good luck, John! Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 10-Apr-07 Time: 17:36:50 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
(Ted Harding) wrote:
APC ... do not supply monitoring and control software for Linux (nearest is Apple OS X), whereas Belkin do (but my old Belkin UPS is getting fragile now).
From http://www.apcupsd.org/ :
"Apcupsd works with most of APC's Smart-UPS models as well as most simple signalling models such a Back-UPS, and BackUPS-Office."
I use it for two SmartUPS 700 over serial, with Ubuntu (aptitude search apcups), and that works fine. Purchased from overclockers.co.uk.
-- Martijn
On 10-Apr-07 16:49:15, Martijn Koster wrote:
(Ted Harding) wrote:
APC ... do not supply monitoring and control software for Linux (nearest is Apple OS X), whereas Belkin do (but my old Belkin UPS is getting fragile now).
From http://www.apcupsd.org/ :
"Apcupsd works with most of APC's Smart-UPS models as well as most simple signalling models such a Back-UPS, and BackUPS-Office."
I use it for two SmartUPS 700 over serial, with Ubuntu (aptitude search apcups), and that works fine. Purchased from overclockers.co.uk.
-- Martijn
Many thanks for this pointer, Martijn! Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 10-Apr-07 Time: 18:28:35 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 05:36:53PM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
One puzzle: Given the prevalence of dodgy mains power in the Fens (and no doubt elsewhere), I'm surprised there are so few outlets for UPS kit. PC World don't seem to hold them any more, and the only place I know that does (World of Computers ar Milton, near Cambridge) only sells APC, which do not supply monitoring and control software for Linux (nearest is Apple OS X), whereas Belkin do (but my old Belkin UPS is getting fragile now).
You don't want to use the Belkin software (or at least, I really don't, given it's binary only and the install seemed fairly shonky). NUT (http://www.networkupstools.org/) is must saner and seems to support a wide range of devices.
J.
On 4/10/07, Ted Harding ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
One puzzle: Given the prevalence of dodgy mains power in the Fens (and no doubt elsewhere), I'm surprised there are so few outlets for UPS kit. PC World don't seem to hold them any more, and the only place I know that does (World of Computers ar Milton, near Cambridge) only sells APC, which do not supply monitoring and control software for Linux (nearest is Apple OS X), whereas Belkin do (but my old Belkin UPS is getting fragile now).
A recent trip to America and visits to shops like Best Buy indicated that it is almost impossible to buy out there a mains power extension lead without a built-in surge suppressor. Is their electricity service that bad?
Tim.
On Tuesday 10 April 2007 22:25, Tim Green wrote:
A recent trip to America and visits to shops like Best Buy indicated that it is almost impossible to buy out there a mains power extension lead without a built-in surge suppressor. Is their electricity service that bad?
Oh yes, and in the sticks, can be extremely dangerous - When there is an earth fault, the supply is often left floating with 220V or more on the live side. Even with proper earth bonding, the supply can fluctuate quite badly...
Regards, Paul.
On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 04:45:06PM +0100, J.R. Seago wrote:
Having given the background here's my question, as I needed to stay in email contact with a number of people today, would it be worthwhile buying a laptop, if so which one? Morgans flyer which came this morning has Toshiba's at prices starting at £328·99. Although I seem to remember reading somewhere that Mesh laptop's fitted GNU/Linux better, anyone any suggestions, or ideas of what to avoid? I'd want toput Slackware 11 onto it.
I'm hazarding a guess here (based on your email address)... but, even if you had a magical laptop and the power went out how would you get online if your adsl router didn't have power? :) You'd need some kind of ups or a usb dsl modem (but they eat battery very quickly). Of course a ups on the dsl gear and a laptop would give the most uptime in the event of a power failure, but i'd look at a ups for the main machine anyway "just in case" so it doesn't get the psu busted if it happens in the future.
Adam
J.R. Seago wrote:
Having given the background here's my question, as I needed to stay in email contact with a number of people today, would it be worthwhile buying a laptop, if so which one? Morgans flyer which came this morning has Toshiba's at prices starting at £328·99. Although I seem to remember reading somewhere that Mesh laptop's fitted GNU/Linux better, anyone any suggestions, or ideas of what to avoid? I'd want toput Slackware 11 onto it.
If you're still looking for a laptop /anyway/ because they're always a good thing to have -- I *highly* recommend Novatech (http://www.novatech.co.uk) for laptops. My girlfriend just bought their cheapest model, sans operating system (what a bonus!). Specs are something like 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, DVD-RW, Widescreen etc etc. and *everything* works out of the box (including with the lovely Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft. It was only around £350...
--Simon
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Jonathan McDowell -
Martijn Koster -
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ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Tim Green