On 03/04 11:43 , Robert Nesius wrote: > If you worked in a data-center with hundreds or thousands of server and > blade fans howling all day, every day, I could see that kind of noise > contributing to hearing loss. But the fans in your home computers are > probably not contributing to hearing loss. At times in the past (before I worked for RTE) I've worked in some noisy rooms. Enough so that I was glad to get out of them and away from the noise. Right now the noise isn't such that it would really bother you much if you didn't listen to it 14 hours a day... but there are some times when I'm glad to put on the earmuffs and enjoy some additional quiet. My home office is comparatively small, and there's little to absorb the noise, so it seems louder and more irritating. Moreso than when I had the same computers in a larger room. > I researched this recently, and learned that your ears become fatigued and > suffer hearing damage based on the intensity of the sound. Very loud music > in headphones can begin to cause problems in 15 minutes or less. As the > decibels decrease, the safe exposure time gets longer. Yep. But while >130db is painful and damaging in a short period of time; it doesn't mean that longer-term exposure isn't damaging as well. I've been around the noise of fans and drives almost continually for 10+ years. Yes, much of that has probably been well under 70db; but I don't know if there's any sort of quantum threshold beneath which there's *no* damage. Oleg Volk made a really cool graphic about noise levels. http://olegvolk.net/gallery/technology/misc/noisevolume2.jpg.html In any case, my empirical results are that there are times at which I really want to wear earmuffs because the noise levels bother me. That's enough to make me want to relocate these computers elsewhere. > I wear hearing protection around guns as much as possible. Too bad silencers aren't legal in MN. They're legal to own in a lot of other states; but you pay a $200 federal tax on them (and wait for goofermint approval) in any case. > I can also vouch for the Avocent Longview being a decently effective > ip-based KVM solution. I was down on them for awhile, but that's because > the unit we had was defective. After an RMA/replacement, the unit has > performed very well. I'll have to look into that. Thanks! I'm really hoping that my next monitors will be bigger than 1600x1200; so I would like a solution that will support that (at least, if I'm to be investing much money into it). -- Carl Soderstrom Systems Administrator Real-Time Enterprises www.real-time.com
