UPS was: which distro for kernel recompilations

Michael Heiming The 2200 va unit has a fan; the 1000va one does not. The fan seldom runs. It does run on very hot days for a few minutes at a time with fairly long (much much longer than the on-time) periods when it is off. It does not turn on for less than a minute (probably to stop execessive starts and stops). It turns on anytime the unit switches to battery. If fan noise is a problem (pretty quiet fan), consider if you need the 2200va unit at all. It is a bit much for a desktop, but with a 660 watt (output; probably about 950 watts in) power supply in the computer, a monitor (LCD, but I had not thought of getting one of those when I selected the UPS), and other stuff, I did not want to skimp. But this way I can get about an hour of uptime when the power fails. Unfortunately it has failed twice (IIRC) this year already for longer than an hour: about 4 hours a month or two ago, and about two hours this time.

Do read the features, if you have not. I especially like the smart boost feature: if the line voltage is low (e.g., brownout), it diddles the input transformer tap and puts out the correct output voltage without switching to battery. Since we get frequent extended brownouts (less frequently now that they rewired my street raising the distribution voltage from 2400 to 4800 volts and putting in more and bigger transformers), this feature is important. If you do not need it, you might, if you otherwise like APC, consider their Back-UPS series that are cheaper.

-- .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642. V PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939. ^^-^^ 20:50:00 up 1 day, 7:19, 3 users, load average: 4.27, 4.16, 4.05