> 1. Seeking advice on whether to return a new router as defective during > the return period, or the cause of dropouts. Hate to mail it back to > Newegg, but should if there's something wrong with it. > > It's a Linksys wrt54gl. > > Experiencing brief dropouts of less than a minute a many times a day and > maybe a few dropouts in two weeks that were quite bothersome. The laptop > I'm using works without dropouts elsewhere on other networks. > > Security is set to wpa-psk, tkip with no ssid broadcasting. No neighbors > conflict with my channel. Can you elaborate on what a "drop out" means? Does your laptop become unassociated, not receive any traffic from the AP, have you tried enabling broadcast of your SSID and checking to see if it is visible during these times? > > 2. Dealing with a 5-year old UPS with a fading battery. Battery > replacement is more than we paid for the unit ($80) and doesn't seem worth > it. I've considered opening it up and disconnecting the low battery beeper > and running it for short term voltage drops as all the computer hardware > has really worked well without issue these years. Or, I might get a new > lead battery (requires two actually). Would appreciate your thoughts as to > whether this has done anything to protect our system, or if it's just one > of those add ons salesmen get you to buy. I didn't connect the UPS to the > computer for monitoring, so I don't really know what it did. This is on > the Roseville area grid. > Besides providing power during an outage they can also provide normalized and cleaned power hiding spikes, noise, frequency changes, etc of the main utility feed which in my experience has helped the longeivity of PC power supplies and other small electronics.