Monitoring load average - healthy figure?

[Jamie]

     I've just installed some new software on my machine running FreeBSD
4.9. It's a dual proc. Pentium III. I used "top" to check my load
averages, and I've noticed that they climbed from around 0.30 to 1.59.


     I've googled the results, and I've seen a couple posts from people
who claim that the general rule of thumb is that your load average should
be less than the number of CPU's. I don't know what OS they were referring
to, however. Does this sound right for FreeBSD? Are there better ways of
monitoring load average?


    - Jamie


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