Ubuntu's performance : how to speed up ?

[Bob Nielsen]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 07:53:17PM +0100, Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
> > In the U.S. the reliability of the power system is normally very good,
> > but during storms, anything can happen. It depends somewhat on location.
> 
> Ah yes, forgot tempermental weather could be over there, doesn't
> help :-/

It depends a lot on location, as I'm sure it also does in France. 
Although I don't recall seeing forests during my two visits there, I'm
sure they still exist.  We have a lot of 100-foot plus evergreens 
locally (my town has 20,000 people and probably two million trees).

> 
> > The price of a UPS has dropped a bit.  I bought two of them recently 
> > (1000 VA) for $100 each.
> 
> Wow, that's cheap ! Only 100 bucks for 1000VA ???  I measured that my
> computer draws only 100VA when the CRT monito is turned off. So assuming
> the UPS can extract every bit of power from the battery, then it could
> keep the central unit running for 10 hours ! Let's be realistic, say 5
> hours, that's still plenty enough time for the power cut to be fixed, in
> 99.9999% of cases, especially as I live in town.
> Hmmm, might think og getting one then....

These are Tripp-Lite Omni VS1000 units I purchased at Costco.  The have
a USB connection and are recognized by the kernel, but I haven't been
able to get any Linux apps (including one I downloaded from the
manufacturer's web site) to talk to them, so I can't use all the
features.  I figure the run time is adequate to shut things down if I am 
home at the time an outage occurs.

I run both my computer and a DirecTV PVR (Linux-based satellite
receiver/recorder) from one of these (not the monitor or printer,
however).  On the other one, I have the computer and some ham radio
equipment connected (running a packet radio server).  Everything has 
kept running during some short outages so far. 

Bob