UPS that is UN-interrupt-able;!..

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 21:16:14 on Sat, 29 Jan

2011, The Natural Philosopher remarked:

If all you want to do is Usenet, feel free to use an iPad. Does it run Thunderbird??

[tony sayer]

network switch, and an IP to serial converter..

What the original concern was as to how are various makes of UPS faring in their users estimation, but then again there doesn't seem to be much competition in the say 500 to 3000 watt area...

[tony sayer]

I think you've hit the nail right on the head there;!...

[Espen Koht]

As a universal replacement, that's undoubtedly true, but I've come across enough people who have switched from laptops to iPads for their travel needs, to take notice. I guess their "on the road" needs are relatively circumscribed.

I suspect a lot of the people above, when they are on the road need to: brush up on information which will be discussed with people they are travelling to see and stay in touch with head office/family, but writing is something they would have done before they left and after they come back.

I had an iPhone on an old style contract for a full year where I had switched off the the GPRS/Edge connectivity to avoid expensive mobile data charges. Having connectivity limited to wifi in certain designated areas (home and work mainly) wasn't a big issue. For the mapping I would often pre-cache the relevant areas ahead of traveling.

[D.M.Chapman]

We used to run the UKC main datacentre via a motor-generator set. This was a big leccy motor spinning a flywheel and a generator.

Meant we could bridge voltage dips/brownouts. No idea how long it gave us - couple seconds at the most I'd imagine.

Long since replace with UPS - currently a huge 3 phase one (the melted batteries I linked to earlier shows what happens when they go wrong :-)) and a backup generator

quiet when running...

Darren

[Bob Eager]

It was an amazing thing. Installed in 1976, it was 1983 before it was realised it had never been serviced (and it has been running 24/7). UKC had been paying ICL for maintenance, and ICL had 'forgotten' to use the money to pay the maintainers!

They decided it was fine but could probably do with some new bearings (big ones). They took it out of service for only 5 hours, during which time they took it apart, hoisted out the armature, replaced the bearings and put it all back together. I don't think it ever actually failed, as such.

I think it may have been more than that - it took many minutes to stop, when turned off.

[D.M.Chapman]

Ah, was hoping you'd come along with details :-)

Only time I ever saw it spin down was when we removed it from service. It took ages to stop then - but it was off load.

Darren

[Roland Perry]

In message , at

17:09:50 on Sun, 30 Jan 2011, Espen Koht remarked:

I've come across people who say things like "I'm on a trip to Stockholm next week, no email". That's the sort of luxury I can't afford (as well as needing access to supporting documentation when I'm in the meetings).

It's a set of niches. The sort of work I do, you get new versions of documents arriving all the time. And responses can't wait till you get home, because the conference is over by then. Maybe that's my niche.

I haven't worked out how to pre-cache yet, but it seems like a sensible idea.

[Roland Perry]

You'd probably like this:

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 08:40:52 on Fri, 28 Jan

2011, Roland Perry writes

And the irony... here in very urban Nottingham, we've just had a power cut for about three minutes. All the UPS stuff in the house carried on fine, but the ADSL modem lost contact with my ISP (so something between here and there wasn't as resilient as we'd hoped for).

[Rupert Moss-Eccardt]

Have you thought of using one or more laptops to do all this and use the USB power to drive the things you have to?

[tony sayer]

In this instance Rupert, not required and rather impractical;!..

[Espen Koht]

That was sort of my point. I was never going to suggest the iPad would satisfy your need Roland, just that other people's work habits may now be converging to one where tables may satisfy their requirements are yours becoming more specialised rather than the norm.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at

00:51:31 on Mon, 31 Jan 2011, Espen Koht remarked:

You were questioning why I'd buy a "phone", rather than a "tablet" (by implication a tablet that also allowed me to do phone calls - and other applications). The answer being that the applications I require don't all run well enough on a tablet, and the only tablet big enough at all to do some of the applications is an iPad which doesn't have phone capability - so I'd be carrying three things rather than two.

My requirements are the same as the classic "desktop PC" user, just that I am able to carry it around with me, pick up my email from anywhere etc. When I go into offices I don't see fewer desktop PCs these days (even if more people are using smartphones as PDAs).

[Dave Liquorice]

Or if they do that bit they don't do it for a realistic period of time. Genset fires up, runs into load bank for a minute or two, switch off. Nothing will have had a chance to get properly hot hot and/or fail under the strain... Should really run for an hour or three and a varying load to replicate what is likely to be asked of it under power fail conditions.

[Alex Selby]

s respect..

Though curiously they happen to have a good deal on for AAs and AAAs at the moment (£14.99 for 100 alkalines).

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 20:13:38 on Wed, 2 Feb 2011, Alex Selby remarked:

If that's the blue own-brand, I've bought the odd box and they are OK. Not sure the SLA are especially overpriced, if you just want one.

[Espen Koht]

How do they compare to branded batteries like a duracell copper-top/procell?

[Duncan Wood]

Well I generally budget on 20p per cell for procell. Their 1000mAh seem to have less usable energy at 10 cycles than 800mAh Eneloops at over 100 cycles, but that's an observation, I've not tested it yet.

[Alex Selby]

I think the rule of thumb is that alkalines are generally reasonably similarish in normal use conditions mostly usually (is that enough caveats?).

According to this random guy on the internet using his discharge test

Maplin extralonglife alkalines (the ones currently on offer) come somewhere in the middle. The Maplin AAAs are 3% worse than Duracell Ultra and Procell, but 9% better than Duracell Plus.