OT: widespread glitches

Luxo wrote on 10/3/2002, 4:29 PM

In the past year, since moving into a new apartment, I've lost four hard drives due to physical crashes and all three of my miniDV players (one deck, two Canon XL1s cameras) exhibit occaisional video/audio glitches when playing footage, sometimes as often as twice a minute.

For months I've just assumed I'm the unluckiest guy in Chicago, but I've started to wonder if it could be due to some household power voltage or interference issue. Does anyone know if this could be the case? Any way to test?

Luxo

Comments

haywire wrote on 10/3/2002, 4:38 PM

A power monitor would show you exactly what's happening to the power in your apartment. The fact is that the power companies figure 1/10 of 1% of the power they generate is for computers (though that is all changing quickly) so conditioning power is not one of their priorities. There's no telling what other "appliances" others in your building may be using, but it may be interfering with your system, along with whatever you may have in your own apartment. A UPS or combo UPS/Conditioner will clean up your power for your computer and periferals, and the UPS will give you enough time to get through a brown out/short black out, or save your work and shut down till the power comes back on.

Michael