You actually want the temperature to swing a bit, it takes some time before the compressor reaches a more solid state efficiency and it definitely isn't in the first 5 minutes of operation. You need long runtimes to get good efficiency and long compressor life.
Mine will swing about 3 degrees from hottest to coldest, which works for me, it runs about 10-15 minutes at a time.
The defrost timer that mine came with defrosts every 10 hours, no matter how much the compressor runs. I used to think it was based off of runtime but found out it isn't. A quick search on ebay for "defrost timer" yields results that are almost all 8 and 10 hour timers. I've taken the defrost timer and timed how long the defrost cycle lasts, 23 minutes, then I pulled the pin that controls the timer and I manually cycle the defrost once a week. Nice thing now is that when I defrost, it's actually defrosting something off the coils instead of just warming them up and then running the compressor for 30 minutes to cool things off again and in the process wasting loads of energy. ...that was the thread I was going to make but then later forgot about. I'll still post it because I've got pictures, but it will be once I've got a month of usage out of it since I now have my Kill-a-watt back to do an 'after'.
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