Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

Yes, another power supply topic, but with a twist this time.

Just got a MP-7, loving it so far, very intuitive. I had a scare though...

I've been only using the soft-power button to power on and off, and just last night I went to turn the unit on, and it just sat there for about 1-2 minutes with all the lights on before going to the "loading......" screen and booting normally.

So, after searching and reading on here I saw that was kind of what happens to failing power supplies (  >:[] ) but I also found this little nugget of info - EU owners had higher rates of power supply failures if the hard-power switch was left on constantly (due to ~ 220v vs 120v).

So, I turned that off, and half an hour later booted it up and everything was as normal. Again, this morning, I turned it on by the hard-power switch, and everything loaded as usual.


So, after all that, my questions are....

1. Should I always soft-power down, and then hard-power off, or can I just hard-power off every time?

2. Should I start researching a replacement power supply, as this could be the sign of things to come? (I found the link to powdec, and couldn't discern if there was a compatible option there...)

TIA, and I've got to give respect to the community for keeping things up and running while creative's dropped the ball.