Power Outages
Jul 10th, 2008 by Don Ray
Here is another story caused by the last power outage. Not too long after the power came on, I received a panic phone call from the person that had bought the YOYTEC system. He couldn’t get his new PC to boot up. He asked if I could come help him because he had homework on the PC and he needed to complete it for tomorrow.
I asked him if he had bought a UPS like I had told him too when I had finished installing Linux. He said he had not. IF YOU LIVE IN PANAMA, DO NOT USE A PC WITHOUT A UPS FOR PROTECTION.
Let me repeat. IF YOU LIVE IN PANAMA, DO NOT USE A PC WITHOUT A UPS FOR PROTECTION.
Even if the power doesn’t go out, many times there are significant power surges that can take out any electronic device. I have all PCs on their own UPS and I have all TVs on GOOD surge suppressors. Just like flossing. You don’t have to do it for all appliances, just the ones you don’t want to lose.
I went over to his house and told him I thought it was his PC and not his monitor. We brought it to my apartment to verify that the PC was bad. He was in a panic. I told him my recommendation was to take it to Micro Technology. I thought if he were lucky, he might get it back early in the morning.
We went and explained the urgency to the service technician. I feared the worst. The power outage could have taken out anything in the PC, Motherboard, CPU, hard drives, etc. Understanding the urgency, the technician said he would look at it immediately.
In 15 minutes, he diagnosed that it was the power supply that had been fried and had replaced it. The cost $40. Now you can’t beat that with a stick for service.
So there are two lessons to be learned here.
1) IF YOU LIVE IN PANAMA, DO NOT USE A PC WITHOUT A UPS FOR PROTECTION.
2) Micro Technology is still hard to beat for service.
I do have an off topic, yet related question. How easy is it to have high speed internet service installed in homes in David, or is it possible? My girlfriend lives there and I want to bring a Vonage adaptor for her to use so that we can talk to each other, as I am lately haveing a very difficult and pissy time with phone cards calling from the States.
Hi Carey. It all depends. If you live in an area that has Cable and Wireless or Cable Onda, which is most of David, then it is normally easy. You should be able to get 1 gig download in most of David.
If you are in a remote area, it will depend on if you have line of site to a wireless transmission tower.
Don Ray
Having lost a mother board, CPU, network card and some other stuff, I now have three cheap surge protectors in series followed by a 5 KW voltage regulator (allegedly + or - 4%) followed by the UPS into which the computer is plugged. If there is a nearby thunderstorm, everything gets unplugged, including the cable coming from our internet tower. Everything also gets unplugged at night, just for the heck of it. Perhaps overkill, but that’s better than the alternative. So far OK, but I also keep my fingers crossed — makes touch typing difficult, but I can live with it.
Dan
Great advice anywhere in the world…I alway take a surge protector when I travel also. I use it for charging my portable PC, cell phones, etc.
Rob
Hi Dan. Yes, you go farther than I do, but you are just smarter than I am or I am just more lazy. I brought good surge supressors from the stated and they take the caple in for TV protection.
Hi Rob. I hadn’t thought of doing that, but it is a good idea also.
When we moved to Nicaragua, everyone told me to bring a UPS for my lap top and other electric appliances. The problem that I encountered was that I had an ant invasion in my UPS. Apparently, the ants liked the heat and laid thousands of eggs inside the UPS. I tried everything to keep the ants out, but to no avail. So, my advice is to get a UPS that doesn’t have any openings in the unused power sockets or buy the little plastic baby protectors to fit in the unused sockets.
Once I cleaned out the UPS and removed thousands of eggs, I thought I had the problem solved. Then, a rat that was nesting in the tile roof above my laptop, peed on my laptop one day and sizzled the motherboard. Since my Dell was still under warranty, I had to figure out a way to get it back to the states. I couldn’t ship it, because it would NEVER get to the states without being stolen. So, I found a friend that took it back to the states and shipped it to Dell. Then, I had the problem of trying to figure out how to get it back to Nicaragua once it was fixed.
Fortunately, our son was flying to Nicaragua over Christmas, so I had the fixed Dell sent to him and he carried it back to me.
Another word of advice: If you buy a computer in the states, and it’s still under warranty, you have to be careful because you warranty might not cover damage received outside of the states.
Don, do you have more advice for computer use in the tropics? I think the humidity and the heat is extremely hard on computers. I need to know how to prepare my laptops for life in Panama.
What do you do to protect your laptop in the tropics?
Hi Debbie. To this point I have not had any PC malfunctions because of rats peeing on the, It would have made an interesting post after I got past throwing my tantrum.
You are correct about PCs requiring more care in the tropics. The only laptop I have now is the little ASUS Eee and I keep it in its case.
There are a couple of things to watch out for with desktops. If you live in an area like I do, you have the windows open a lot. Houses here get a lot more dirt than the do in the states. Every month or so it is good to open the case and clean it out. I did that today. Every blade on the CPU fan was covered in a fuzzy dirt. This was easy to pick off, but other dirt should be blown out and not vacuumed out.
Another problem I have had was memory needing to have the contacts cleaned. Normally a PC will beep on startup if there is a memory problem. After I learned that the problem was not bad memory, but dirty contats, it was easy to take care of. A soft, good quality eraser will clean them very well.
I no longer have the laptop I brought to Panama With me. It started having problems with the keys not working. I have to assume that was corrosion due to humidity too. I never got it fixed because it was going to require a new keyboard which was more money than I wanted to put in a old laptop.
Don Ray,
It is a good idea to take the computer to a decent computer fix-it place every six months or so to have the guts cleaned, even if it isn’t acting up. It is surprising what is in there, and the cost is minimal. One of these days, I plan to get a net-like fabric with which to surround the computer and wash the net once in a while.
Ah for the good old days. I had a Radio Shack Model 100 portable computer (the first such, as I recall), purchased back when they first came out more than twenty years ago. I used it on our boat sailing in the Caribbean for about seven years starting in 1996. Poor thing finally died once we moved ashore. It was simple, booted up instantly, and I continue to be amazed at the sophistication of the machine language programming which put a whole (not bad) word processor, spread sheet, and some other stuff into about 16K (K, not Meg). I also had a neat little thermal printer, which continued working even after I had to pour half a cup of salt water out. Try that with some of the modern stuff.
Dan
Hi Dan. Yes those were the good old days. My first PC was an Apple II. It had 4K of memory. I remember buying my son an Amiga (nonly because aI couldn’t justify it for me) and that was an incredible PC. The only problem was that it disn’t have IBM stamped on it.
Thanks for returning. Your advice about the cleaning is true.
Hi Don,
My information relates to the first post about voice communication on PCs. I have discovered that GOOGLE TALK is the best reception I’ve had, beats Skype and others I’ve tried. (Google Chat is also good.)
Hi Fran. I use google email, but I don’t think I have ever used google talk in voice. Skype has worked well for me talking from here to the US or Costa Rica. Thanks for dropping in and taking the time to leave a comment.
I have a suggestion for the first poster (Carey) as well. I ran into this situation before I married my wife. VOIP by far is the cheapest. There are a couple of companies that I use that will give a really cheap price for calls to houses ($0.03) and well as mobiles ($0.11). One company I use is called Voicestick (http://www.voicestick.com). They are cheap and have been reliable for two years for me. The quality is decent. Also, they offer bridge which allows you to dial a number which then ports your call over to the voip network. Also, I have another company that allows me to get a Panama local number that I have configured at my house here in Panama and my wife’s family calls that number and our phone rings here in the United States. By the way, these are all pay as you go plans. No monthly billing. There are a lot of ways to make this inexpensive. But the key is flexibility. You want to be able to make the call from your house plus your cell phone. I can provide more information if needed.
Excellent Mike! Feed me more. I have been looking into bring a service with a U.S. number to there, but it all depends on here getting high speed to her house. She has dial up, but currently not paying for service. This way I could call her from where ever I am on my cell and recieve her calls.
I am interested in setting up a Panama number and service to my house also. Whatever works.
Hi Carey send your email to Don so I can get in touch with you. I don’t want to post mine due to spam bots.
Mike I just forwarded yoy Carey’s email address to speed things up.
thank you both. I was thinking the same thing
Hi! My boyfriend and I are planning on moving to Costa Rica. I am a medical transcriptionist and need to keep working! Can I use a satellite phone to receive emails to my desktop computer to receive and send emails? That is the way I am set up here, sending/receiving reports via email. Would you know anything about this? We have not decided yet where we will be settling in, but I’m sure there isn’t any handy Bright House etc to connect us up! Thanks for your help!
Karen from Florida
Hi Karen,
Sorry, but I do not know if that is available in Panama or Costa Rica. I would contact your current provider and ask. I know that different satellites are used for the US and CR or Panama for DirecTV.
Is there a reason that you can’t use regular email? It could be because of your need for immediate information and the Internet is not always reliable for all needs in Latin America. Sorry, I can’t help you with your question.
Thank you for responding so quickly. I could probably use regular email…just gotta go down there and see the lay of the land. Thank you again!!
Karen
I use Vonage for VOIP. It’s a great service and I will continue to use it when we move to Panama in a couple of years. I’ve been waiting for Vonage to provide virtual numbers in Panama so that my wife’s Panama City family can dial a local Panama City number that rings at our house in the USA. Her family doesn’t use computer/Internet technology except when they visit an Internet cafe (sometimes I think no computer/Internet is a very good idea…smile).
Does anyone know a telecom service provider for virtual numbers that provide coverage to Panama City? The caller in Panama calls the Panama City number and the call is routed to a phone elsewhere in the world. Thanks for your time.