The Vent and Rant Thread

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

Do you guys turn your machines on and off every day, or even several times a day? It's my contention that this causes more stress on a machine than leaving it running, as it is with light bulbs. They tend to blow when you first switch them on, rather than when they've been running a while. I doubt the electrical analogy is correct, but I seem to be able to avoid mechanical problems.

My desktop is up 24/7. It gets rebooted if I install software that requires it, or if I'm booting into a different OS. (It has Win2K Pro, WinXP Pro, and Linux installed.)

It only gets turned off if I have to fiddle with hardware.

The electricity cost is not a factor here.

Over the years, the things that have failed in my systems have been power supplies. No surprise: PCs are commodities with commodity pricing, and manufacturers are always looking to squeeze pennies from the cost. Power supplies are one area where pennies get saved.

I could turn it off, but there is convenience in simply leaving it on: various things can be set to happen while I'm asleep, and not impact foreground usage.
______
Dennis

[bjones6416]

What about electrical storms? I don't have a UPS at home, although we all had them on our machines at work. During the summer here we have frequent thunderstorms, and you'll often see a house fire or two reported on the news afterward. It's been ingrained in a lot of us to unplug all important appliances when a storm approaches. Does anybody else do that?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by bjones6416

What about electrical storms? I don't have a UPS at home, although we all had them on our machines at work. During the summer here we have frequent thunderstorms, and you'll often see a house fire or two reported on the news afterward. It's been ingrained in a lot of us to unplug all important appliances when a storm approaches. Does anybody else do that?

Nope.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by bjones6416

What about electrical storms? I don't have a UPS at home, although we all had them on our machines at work. During the summer here we have frequent thunderstorms, and you'll often see a house fire or two reported on the news afterward. It's been ingrained in a lot of us to unplug all important appliances when a storm approaches. Does anybody else do that?

Not necessary here. ConEd's power grid is pretty reliable. We get occasional brown-outs in mid-summer when everyone's A/C kicks in at once, but haven't had an actual serious outage since the cascade failure that knocked out a good chunk of the east coast years back.

I do see local outages: it's possible for me to pop a breaker on the circuit feeding my place if too many things are plugged in and active at once. It's an annoyance, but not a disaster: when I reset the breaker and power back on, the machines all boot up normally.

Everything is plugged into a surge protector, but thus far a UPS hasn't been required.
______
Dennis

[bjones6416]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Nope.

Is it not stormy there, or do you have a UPS? Really, even if we don't have anything as extreme as a house fire (!), power goes out, even if momentarily, a LOT during the summer. I've always heard that the surge of coming back on is hard on appliances. I'm no electrician, though.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by bjones6416

Is it not stormy there, or do you have a UPS? Really, even if we don't have anything as extreme as a house fire (!), power goes out, even if momentarily, a LOT during the summer. I've always heard that the surge of coming back on is hard on appliances. I'm no electrician, though.

We have an occasional outage but not often. I have a surge protector (just the power-plug type, nothing special. It's not really the come on that is an issue, though that does load the grid/supply when a whole house (or block) comes on at once. Usually the more problematic thing is the spikes and lulls if that is happening. Most electronics runs off of switching power supplies these days which are much less susceptible to power fluctuations.

Lightning strikes can cause major issues particularly though Cable or Phone lines if they are above ground (e.g. on poles)....

oh and I am an EE. That doesn't mean I know that much, but I was trained and studied all of it at some point.

[Mortis]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Lightning strikes can cause major issues particularly though Cable or Phone lines if they are above ground (e.g. on poles)

Lightning is the main issue here, the brown outs are a pain but not that big an issue.

Kenny do the surge protectors really work to protect against lightning? We have fiber optic into our place, from the pole, I thought I was so smart when we ordered it, no more worries about lightning I thought, except the fiber optic has a thick stainless steel stiffener, so much for no lightning. Any way to surge protect from the router to the computer?

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by bjones6416

Is it not stormy there, or do you have a UPS? Really, even if we don't have anything as extreme as a house fire (!), power goes out, even if momentarily, a LOT during the summer. I've always heard that the surge of coming back on is hard on appliances. I'm no electrician, though.

you just need a surge protector to guard against the surge of energy coming in as power re-boots. if you have ever had air in your water lines and seen the build up of pressure as the water resumes, that is similar to what is happening with power restorations. in an ideal world for the power company, all legs of dead circuits would be turned off and eased back on when power is restored, but that just isn't going to happen

I lose power several times a month in the winter, and at least a few times during the summer. quite often I am actually using my laptop as the power goes out. I got this laptop almost 4 years ago on a contract I was on and it was used then. I almost never turn my laptop off, just close it when I am finished even when I am taking it somewhere. it has more frequent flier miles than most people. it has been dropped, jostled in overhead bins, stepped on by my 185 pound Newife, I just recently managed to crack the screen about an inch and a half in from the left due to picking it up by the edge of the screen. the laptop itself is just now beginning to fail. my mouse jumps all over the place, scrolls on its own, and does a bunch of other extremely annoying things. last week it started blue screening, 5 times in one day alone. I did as many clean-ups as possible, but it is on its last legs. wiser heads than mine have determined that the hard drive has probably been corrupted. so it is about to be put out to pasture. it will stay by my bedside as long as I can still get online with it, but no more travels for this old work horse

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Mortis

Lightning is the main issue here, the brown outs are a pain but not that big an issue.

Kenny do the surge protectors really work to protect against lightning? We have fiber optic into our place, from the pole, I thought I was so smart when we ordered it, no more worries about lightning I thought, except the fiber optic has a thick stainless steel stiffener, so much for no lightning. Any way to surge protect from the router to the computer?

Yes and no. A close direct hit is pretty going to fry anything and just the bypass energy/surge will do most electronics in.

The only sure way -- as Betty said -- is to uplug and disconnect things completely.

[Mortis]

Wish unplugging was that easy, this is a direct connection so disconnecting wouldn't be so easy, although we are now entirely wireless so I'm not worried about the computers, its the router I want to protect. we went wireless after the 2nd router and 4 nic cards were fried, a very common occurrence here.

[Jude2444]

Thank you for this spot to vent. I have 2 items really bugging me.
1. I bought myself a Sony 650 in the fall and I really am enjoying it. My 2 brothers decided to get an ereader for their wives and, based on my recommendations, they each bought a Kobo Pandigital. All of us wanted to be able to borrow books from the library. Unfortunately the Kobo does not support ePub, so they are unable to do this. What's with this! All other Kobos support ePub!
2. I consol them with this thought: even if you are able to borrow ebooks from your library, there are hardly any available to borrow! At any one time, 80-90% are signed out. The only ones left are Harlequins and stupid teen vampire books. I have access to 3 major libraries in Canada (OK, I "borrowed" cards from friends) and they are all the same.
Thanks. I feel better now.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

Do you guys turn your machines on and off every day, or even several times a day? It's my contention that this causes more stress on a machine than leaving it running, as it is with light bulbs. They tend to blow when you first switch them on, rather than when they've been running a while. I doubt the electrical analogy is correct, but I seem to be able to avoid mechanical problems.

My current desktop computer is left on 24/7 and is now about eight years old. I changed the motherboard about four years ago, but that was less than $100 USD. I do have some extra fans mounted inside the cabinet to reduce heat, but other than the occasional attack from malware, I don't have problems with it. (touch wood) I've been doing this 24/7 with computers for the past two computers and only upgrade when there is some really great new hardware that I 'really must have.'

Stitchawl

My last PC lasted nearly 10 years, and the only time it wasn't running was during power failures, my current one is going on three, and showing no signs of slowing down. It was pretty high end when I bought is, so it should last a while longer.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Only reason we turn our main PCs off each night is to conserve electricity (like the good people we are )
One stays on cos that's connected to our seismometer, and the router stays on (despite it not being in use when the main ones are switched off )

I have gone through a huge flap about turning PCs off at night. I work in computer management for the US Army in the Pacific Theatre and we would like all PCs to stay running in order to be able to push security upgrades to them during the night. That insures that the latest upgrades are installed without impacting the workflow of the users. The electrical power folks want to shut them all down to conserve power.

We have done many studies on power usage, and if you leave the PCs and monitors on at full power, they use a lot. With the tens of thousands of PCs we have it can amount to a pretty hefty electric bill; several millions of dollars per year.

BUT! if you set the power settings to turn off the monitor, and put the PC into standby, the power usage is minimal, and the loss of productivity it takes to install patches during the day more than makes up for it.

Unfortunately, we still haven’t convinced the General; so we shut them all down, and users have to wait for the patches to get installed when they start them up in the morning.

Yes, I know, we could solve it with "Wake on LAN", but the security guys won't let us.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by wodin

I have gone through a huge flap about turning PCs off at night. ....

Unfortunately, we still haven’t convinced the General; so we shut them all down, and users have to wait for the patches to get installed when they start them up in the morning.

Yes, I know, we could solve it with "Wake on LAN", but the security guys won't let us.

[bjones6416]

Originally Posted by wodin

I have gone through a huge flap about turning PCs off at night. I work in computer management for the US Army in the Pacific Theatre and we would like all PCs to stay running in order to be able to push security upgrades to them during the night. That insures that the latest upgrades are installed without impacting the workflow of the users. The electrical power folks want to shut them all down to conserve power.

We have done many studies on power usage, and if you leave the PCs and monitors on at full power, they use a lot. With the tens of thousands of PCs we have it can amount to a pretty hefty electric bill; several millions of dollars per year.

BUT! if you set the power settings to turn off the monitor, and put the PC into standby, the power usage is minimal, and the loss of productivity it takes to install patches during the day more than makes up for it.

Unfortunately, we still haven’t convinced the General; so we shut them all down, and users have to wait for the patches to get installed when they start them up in the morning.

Yes, I know, we could solve it with "Wake on LAN", but the security guys won't let us.

Yep, when I said we had a UPS on each machine at work, that was in my office on an Army post. We were required to log out each night (we used CAC cards to access the network), but leave the machines on. They pushed updates during the night so it wouldn't disrupt us during the day.