Thanks, I'm glad I mentioned that... I never tested that thing on my solid ink, but thanks to a note I got, I did a little experimenting, and I don't think this is going to work... here's why... I computed the demand on the wattage they gave me for power consimption guidelines, probably an average. What matters is peak draw. I did some research (thanks)... and I'm starting to think my APC 750 model computation's not necessarily adequate, even dedicated. And yes, I suddenly realized why APC cautions against it. It's not using up a battery too quickly, it's about possibly frying the PS. I was looking at the APC netsmart model 750, too, as an upgrade, and I'm starting to think it might be problematic with my monitor, even on the system...
I'm doing some more research before I plug back in, right now, thanks to this thread... I'm not entirely sure how the solid ink works, but the thing with a laser is warm-up... now, I'm not going to start up the printer, we say, why's that matter? Because on a laser, the fuser "warms up" every fifteen or so minutes, to be ready to print... I have a TI laser that draws enough power when it cycles that it dims the lights if I run it on the wrong circuit, here. I don't know if the solid ink does, too, but it's sure worth researching.
The reason for UPS'ing a printer, in the case of the solid ink, is that cleaning/self-test cycle, a twenty minute warmup from cold start, and wasting up to a fifth of an ink stick in the process. At a couple hundred dollars per pack of 5 sticks, that adds up. On a laser, I guess the reasoning is that if it's mid-print, it would finish the page, and give you a chance to shut down smoothly ... but per copy costs really don't justify that with most any printer, except maybe inkjet, which, if you figure it out, will really surprise (even stun) you, if you do full color photo enlargements or things like that. As I said, with the solid ink, it's an economics of ink analysis. They have a very low cost per print, averaged out, but it jumps by twice or thrice, over the life of a stick of ink, if you shut down and start up too often...
Anybody have any experience running a Tektronix Phaser 800 series printer with a UPS? I and at least one other forum regular would appreciate any remarks anybody has... I was thinking that would cover me through those short summer drop outs, but if it fries a 200 dollar PS to save 20 dollars in ink, that just doesn't add up... I'm really curious. This has been the one single complaint I've had dogging me since I got the Tek. Great printers, beautiful output, nice cost analysis, long as it doesn't have to start up too often.
VOIP (to keep focused, and return to the thread topic
) isn't my killer app, yet. Might be down the road, but I really want to see that in the field, being developed a little more, before I plunge in. My vision is more aimed at bandwidth for internet, CTV, and future expansion, right now, I'm really not ready to trust IP based telephony, just yet... it has advantages that need to be weighed against disadvantages. That's an individual call, though.
Fiber is, as I see it, the big move forward in telecom tech, right now. The carrier medium. And, I admit, it's an enigma, to me. It's light years better technology than copper, but it does introduce new, unique points of failure into the infrastructure. And I'm a little nervous, I admit, today. We rely immensely on technology, and it really has dawned on me that we're a
great deal more at risk of catastrophic infrastructure failures, not just in telecom, today than in my father's generation. We don't seem to prioritize durability and redundency very much, in the infrastructure, any more. And nothing's changed, if anything, complex systems introduce more points of failure, as a rule, than simple systems. All systems, however simple, are vulnerable to failure. Durability and redundency used to be given absolutes in infrastructure design, features were always expendable for system durability and resiliance, when I was growing up. We need to be very cautious not to be tempted to reverse that equation, and make durability expendable for features, or, worse, cost containment. When in doubt, "overbuild", was the motto of the old glory days of Ma Bell and as part of our legacy from the experience of the industrial revolution. And strive to create redundent, fail-safe systems, wherever possible.
Today, we're so dependent, as a society, on technology, that the fail-safety component's
far more important than it was in my father's generation. And my fear is we're treating it as a far less important than feature sets and cost containment, today. People are more dependent. I've striven, myself, to have a home and lifestyle that works
best and most fun with technology, but that is never placed at risk by proactively contemplating points of failure and making sure none of them can unilaterally create a catyastrophic failure of one service or another.
That's as simple as having at least one wired, old fashioned phone on each floor of my house, sometimes... or having a spare ignitor (or at least knowing where the nearest HVAC supply store is, if you get caught without one, and what part number to ask for) for the furnace on hand...
... there, in fact, is a perfect example of fail safety as an after thought, to finish up with, in a critical infrastructure system... great metaphor, in fact, makes it very easy... in our home, the "critical infrastructure" includes "heat." In my youth, a furnace was a big cast iron heat exchanger over a big firebox with an industrial style burner and a pilot light. Even in a catastrophic failure, you had a better than around 75% chance of getting it up, manually, while waiting for repairs. Now, they're computerized, use exotic firebox and burner design, and rely on an "ignitor," an electrically activated very fragile limited life span heating element. When it goes, the entire system fails. A $25 easily replaced part, and it can, hypothetically, create the conditions that lead to someone's death from hypothermia.
Yet many of us never consider that - in dad's day, we got a wire brush, under similar conditions, and cleaned the pilot light, or stuck a match in there and relit it manually. Risky, hell. So is freezing on a -1 degree morning, like we're having, here, recently. But how carefully is that being considered in modern design??? When your living room's 37 degrees with a roaring fire in the fireplace, at any rate, the triviality of a 25 dollar part in a 3500 dollar furnace is decidedly
not trivial, and you are
not grateful for a safety feature that shuts the whole system down at the CPU when any subsystem, however trivial, fails... that's not easily over-ridden by the average homeowner... I rest my case.
I do spend some time thinking about that sort of thing... it's so trivial and transparent, while everything's working, but a few trivial failures create one big infrastructure failure. Analogizing the telecom system, imagine the power's out, your cell phone's dead, and you need to call 911 to get a sick child to the hospital... suddenly, the "triviality" of always available telephony is a
great deal less trivial...