First, just as I had settled down to handle all the over-nigh email, business and personal, crack-bzzzzzz-ummmmm.mmm... The power went. All over the neighborhood.
That took a couple of hours.
Then when the power was back, possibly because of the sudden interruption*, Apple Mail app was angry with me and said it would have nothing to do with my mail files. It would have to "import" ALL the mail again! Now, I am not sure what it means, because it already *has* all the mail, where does it have to "import" it from?
Well, that has already taken at while, meaning hours. I've used Mail for 3-4 years, and guess how many messages it has to reestablish? One million, three hundred and twenty-two, nine hundred and sixty-one emails! Holy mama funk. Ridikuwush.
*After all these years, I've now finally decided to get an Uninterruptible Power Source, UPS.
Update:
OK, I got the UPS Battery Backup today. Man! That thing is only slightly bigger than a shoe box, but it weighs like a TV set! Solid fokker!
It seems pretty simple, and I've got it plugged in and working now.
I would say "I should have gotten one years ago", but actually Northern Europe has pretty stable electricity, and this is the only the third outtage I remember in 11 years (back in Denmark, I don't recall any... well, actually one, back in the early eighties, and maybe a couple when I was a kid), and the first which actually happened while I was on the computer. Still, it was a rather abrupt feeling, and it did seem to mess up Mail causing it to take hours to reestablish itself, so I feel good about having it.
Besides the UPS, you might try Postbox as your mail client. Mail was discarded as it refused to remember my passwords. So far, Postbox just works, no tantrums.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Oddly, that's not one of those I'd heard of.
ReplyDeleteMail is... buggy. Its searches are deeeead-slow, and it's just temperamental and with rough corners.
For searching - try Copernic Desktop Search. It continuously catalogues your computer and finds stuff almost instantaneously (well, maybe not if you have millions of mails).
ReplyDeleteA UPS is invaluable - I have an APC 750 with a battery that allows a progressive, orderly shutdown if a power outage lasts more than a few minutes. And it also manages the power supply so the computer is much more stable and enduring (fewer power supply failures, etc.)
Overestimate the amount of power in the ups you think you need. Most of the UPS home systems I'v seen use sealed lead acid batteries, which lose the capacity to hold a charge over time. I've had 2 go bad, 3 to 5 years after installation; essentially, they went from being able to power the computer for a couple of hours to only seconds.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I did suspect something like that, vaguely.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to consider testing it once a year by turning on the equipment it is powering (but not running any programs), then kill the power from the mains. Record how long it provides power: you want to have enough time to do an orderly shut down, either manually of if you are using the auto-shut down feature of many ups devices. When (not if) the time gets too short, time to replace it.
ReplyDeletep.s. the weight is the lead in the battery.
Thanks, very good idea.
ReplyDeleteIt seems one can buy replacement batteries separately, so that's good.