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Pissin about with solar panels and saving the planet ideas

Discussion in 'General Chit Chat' started by Bootsonground, Oct 22, 2018.

  1. Jim
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    Jim Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    I brought a surge protector with me from England, it's been connected to my desktop from day one, It's the brownouts that have ruined my desktop. Have been looking at some UPS today they are okay for my PC but need more powerful ones for fans, tv lights and so on.
  2. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Even the biggest UPS will run down in a very short time generally they are designed for protecting electronics so TV yes, computer yes, but I would not use them with fans and the likes, the wiring in teh fans will likely withstand even pretty bad brownouts pretty well, LED lighting might have a harder time as there is circuitry in them.
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  3. Jim
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    Jim Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Maybe I will get something else for fans and lights then.
  4. Dave_E
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    Dave_E Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Why not get a Tilley lamp instead of all this newfangled nonsense. :cool:
  5. Jim
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    Jim Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Had to google ' Tilley lamp" lol. Got plenty of battery operated lights/Lamps. That's not the problem. Need fans in the bedrooms even floor stand fans. I have seen 12-volt fans that will run off a car battery even USB fans. We had a brownout this morning so no internet, fans, TV, etc. So back to solar panels got a quote for solar backup 3KW system off grid 190k pesos. That will run TV, internet/desktop, fridge/freezer, lights and fans for a few hours.
  6. DavidAlma
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    DavidAlma Well-Known Member

    You can buy a decent quality standby generator of that size for not much more than 20K.
  7. Jim
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    Jim Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    True, but it's quality of the electric that's loads the delicate Desktop and Smart TV. Okay for fans and fridge. Still need a UPS for the desktop.
  8. DavidAlma
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    DavidAlma Well-Known Member

    Not really, good generators are pretty well regulated. The laptop psu will withstand quite a big tolerance on supply voltage.
  9. Jim
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    Jim Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    I don't know much about generators but a desktop will need a UPS unless the generator is equipped with an automatic start and switch-over from the mains AC during a brownout. A laptop would be okay as it's got its own battery.
  10. DavidAlma
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    DavidAlma Well-Known Member

    Even if equipped with an ATS there would still be an outage of several seconds whilst the generator fired up and came on line. Agreed that a small UPS is always useful for sensitive devices.
  11. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    How bad are the brown outs in your neck of the woods Jim?

    The don't seem so bad in Manila these days, back 12 years ago there were some bad ones when I rented a condo and there were a few after we moved in 2008 to the current house but I can't remember a problem during any of my visits over the last five years.

    All my machines that I have over there now are laptops but because the kids use the laptops docked I removed the batteries as having them permanently charging destroys lithium batteries so our laptops are actually at as much risk as the desktops. I might get a UPS for them next time.
    Last edited: Nov 1, 2018
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  12. Jim
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    Jim Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Not as bad as they were a few years ago but we get a lot of short brownouts that last a few minutes, we had 3 in one night a few nights ago. Where I live there is a lot of bamboos that needs clearing, the electric board need to isolate the power usually on Sundays all day brownout.
    My next machine will be a laptop, this desktop is 7 years old so I think it's time to get rid. Every time I try and boot it up I get a message unable to start windows, then a repair message, then sometimes I get the blue screen dumping memory.
  13. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Yeah you are getting that because the machine is cutting out in the middle of critical operations when the power goes down, it's a software issue which could be fixed with a clean install of the operating system but it will keep recurring if it the machine keeps losing power.

    The repair message is due to one or more critical files either damaged or missing, the blue screen could be a physical hardware issue maybe some bad RAM or it might be a hardware driver issue where you need a driver update.

    Seven years is not that old for a desktop computer, I run laptops that old and older and they perform admirably.

    Which version of Windows are you on?
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  14. graham59
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    graham59 Banned

    My desktop only went tits up after 15 years... this year. RIP old friend... now on a landfill site somewhere in Yorkshire. :(

    ...Or, maybe he's been recycled into a crucial part on Lewis Hamilton's next season F1 car. :geek:
  15. Jim
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    Jim Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Originally windows 7 then upgraded to windows 10 when I was in the UK, it was running okay then. Then came over here the problems started when the updates started it would get stuck 0n 81%, so I ended up taking it to a computer shop and they put windows 7 back on. Looks like a cooperative version the ones they use in college. Incidentally, the computer booted up fine this morning.
  16. Jim
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    Jim Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Must have been fast :lol:
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  17. graham59
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    graham59 Banned

    Updated somewhat from original spec of course. :like:

    .
    old computer.jpg
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  18. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Some of the Windows Updates for Windows 10 take an extraordinary amount of time to get through, download and process, I've seen even me think it was stuck when it was just busy.

    Win 10 is generally better but it will struggle with older hardware if the drivers are no longer supported, I worry about that for my older laptops as one day they won't be supported, however when that happens I will probably install Linux probably Debian on them, I am thinking about a second hand ThinkPad X1 Carbon for Christmas though which will keep me current even though I will hate the keyboard.

    If your machine boots ok once it should be fine all the time unless it has a lot of power failures, if it is random then that suggests an intermittent hardware issue.

    Whatever you get next make sure it has an SSD solid state disk rather than a spinning one, the difference is night and day, ten second boot times with Windows 10, even on a 7 year old laptop once it has an SSD, some of my really old laptops with SSD's take a bit longer at 20 seconds :)
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  19. Anon04576
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    Anon04576 Well-Known Member

    Just bought 10 Lenovo laptops, cant remember the model. Setting them up yesterday for our reps. The CTRL key is not in the bottom left!!! No end of missed Ctrl-C’s and Ctrl-V’s, terrible design.

    Awaiting 4 X1 Carbons which were mistakingly cancelled. Tried to find out why but it was All Souls day in Bratislava yesterday, just like somewhere else we know.

    Trying to buy stuff off Lenovo is the worst sales support Ive come across. Come back Dell all is forgiven.
  20. Dave_E
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    Dave_E Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Just got myself a new laptop a month ago after my old one had a disagreement with a cup of tea. I don’t quite understand what happened as only a couple of drops hit the keyboard, however the beep codes seemed to suggest that the motherboard was frazzled.

    My old laptop was a Dell XPS 15 (L502X) which had given me over seven years good use, the replacement is a Dell Inspiron 13, (7370), with 16GB ram, a 512GB SSD, and a FHD (non touch) screen.

    Observations:
    • The SSD is excellent, far more responsive than the old hard drive.
    • The weight is just half that of my old laptop, brilliant for travel.
    • When travelling it stays in a Cushcase laptop sleeve (highly recommended) carried inside my backpack, and so far I have not been asked to remove it from the sleeve during airport security x-ray!
    • Dell shipped within about 3 days as promised, however they shipped from China which rather surprised me. It arrived in just under two weeks which was no problem as I was away in Egypt for a month and would not have been able to use it earlier.
    • My concerns about changing from a 15” to 13” screen were unfounded, just a few minor issues with some of my wider excel spreadsheets.
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2018

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