Do you have a UPS backup for your Computer?

[burnman99]

UPS:is that like Fedex?
:P

Seriously,I have a surge supressor but I have no use for a UPS because I always save whatever I'm working on.

Yeah, but I ship my stuff DHL cause it's cheaper. As for computer I've got a surge protector but that's it

Later

Rog

[SingSing]

I don't see the need of a UPS.

Like Bill Joy said : "The network is the computer".

Nearly all important stuff is on more than one computers, or in my Web mail folder.

Note : About the other UPS, UnitedParcelService always delivered stuff while nobody is at home, and I have to go and pick it up. I think UPS means UnitedPickupService.

[buttzilla]

No...I have a cold fusion reactor in my basement and I don't have to worry about power failures.

[TheFamilyMan]

I don't do anything on my home computer important enough to warrent an UPS, though surge protectors are a must. BTW, I find the fourth option a bit confusing: a surge protector is not a UPS (or am I missing something here).

[Alan69]

Got a 750W APC for $10 after $90 off in sale and rebates, so had to get one. Wish I'd gotten 2 or 3, is a good unit, and haven't seen a deal like it since. Buried cables in the areas I've lived in, still get an interruption now and then for construction hookups etc. Always nice when things don't reset.. Just needs a FedEx sticker on it..

[buttzilla]

I don't do anything on my home computer important enough to warrent an UPS, though surge protectors are a must. BTW, I find the fourth option a bit confusing: a surge protector is not a UPS (or am I missing something here).

Most ups' are surge protectors also.

[AlecWest]

Having had a friend whose one-month-old brand-new system was fried during an electrical storm power surge (poor guy), I most certainly have a surge protector. One note on that ... and please correct me if I'm wrong. I've heard that using the "reset" button on a surge protector will restore power ... but that, after the first surge, most if not all of the protection is lost. So in my case, all of my electronic equipment is plugged into a surge protector that is plugged into ANOTHER surge protector before it gets to the outlet. That way, should I have a surge, only one of the surge protectors needs to be trashed ... allowing me to go out and buy a 2nd one at my leisure (unless lightning strikes twice on the same day, hehe).

I've seen a lot of UPS units on the market. But for the brief reserve you're given (and for a not-so-cheap price), I see no need to have one. Almost all of my losable work is word processor work ... and my word processor saves the document every five minutes whether I ask it to or not (grin). I like that feature. In short, I'll never lose a long document in its totality. At worst, I'd only lose 5 minutes worth of work.

[ozymango]

I've got a surge protector for the TV, computers, and the like, but no UPS -- we don't have power outages or even flickers that often around here (Portland, OR), and when we do, I not only turn everything off, I unplug it. Ever see the Mythbusters episode where they showed what can happen when lightning strikes a power line?

Not that we ever get that many lightning strikes around here but I've had power surges blow out a few house circuit breakers in my time, I'd rather be safe than sorry!

[Richard_G]

Not a lot of need for one in the UK, my last power cut was on the 15th of October 1987 and most of Southern England went off that night!

[lordsmurf]

after the first surge, most if not all of the protection is lost.

Correct, sort of.

Most all low-end units die slowly (in a 1-3 years) or will commit instant suicide during a large incident, to protect the equipment.

Most "surge strips" have no real protection, just more outlets. You don't really get protection until you spend $30-50. Then you don't really get a good battery until you spend $75-150.

$100 is a drop in the bucket to protect $1000+ of equipment AND give you emergency power. It's all about perspective, really.

[ozymango]

I've heard that using the "reset" button on a surge protector will restore power ... but that, after the first surge, most if not all of the protection is lost.

A good surge arrestor has some sort of indicator so you'll know that the protection is blown; usually they just stop working all together but I've seen a few where they'll blow (the protection) but still allow current, which is bad news.

Best surge suppressors I've seen, is from APC, "SurgeArrest." Visit them at www.apc.com -- a good surge supressor does not need to be expensive, it's ridiculous that some companies market these $150 surge suppressors, claiming that anything else pretty much sucks -- APC makes a very good, very simple 7 outlet protector for about $25.

And yes you can get whole-house protection, server back-up, power-rack back-up, they do it all. And you can get a SurgeArrest protector at many stores near you, again for reasonable prices, though I must admit they're often just beige, plain-looking devices, not all all hi-tech!

[redwudz]

Most inexpensive surge protectors use a MOV (Metal Oxide Varistor) that 'blows up' as it directs the power to ground as it self destructs. If there is a reset button, that's more likely a circuit breaker. Fine for overloads, but not surges.

One article on surge protectors: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/surge-protector.htm

[AlecWest]

-- we don't have power outages or even flickers that often around here (Portland, OR), and when we do, I not only turn everything off, I unplug it. Ever see the Mythbusters episode where they showed what can happen when lightning strikes a power line?

Well, sometimes during spring and autumn, we get some pretty good winds in Portland (I'm a Columbus Day Storm survivor). But, the last two power failures in my neighborhood were from man-made causes. A drunk drove his car into one of those ground-based transformers (the ones that are fenced off). And on another occasion. a local plumbing contractor didn't "call before digging" and cut one of our ever-increasing underground lines.

Not that we ever get that many lightning strikes around here but I've had power surges blow out a few house circuit breakers in my time, I'd rather be safe than sorry!

That APC unit you mentioned seems adequate to do the job. Cheap, too.

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=PH8VT3&tab=models

[Jeremiah58]

What is an average service life of a battery (in years)?
Does UPS performs a normal shutdown of a PC?

[lordsmurf]

About 3 years, and UPS are connected to a computer via USB or serial (or LAN), and have software that will initiate a shutdown based on the variables (such as "shut down when only 4 minutes are left on the battery").

The software also has diagnostics and other information, so you can monitor the health and status of the UPS.

[ozymango]

Well, sometimes during spring and autumn, we get some pretty good winds in Portland (I'm a Columbus Day Storm survivor).

Howdy, neighbor!!! Yeah, it's the winds here that cause havoc, that and the occasional ice storm, those are great for pulling down power lines. But disappointingly little thunder and lightning -- not for my own tastes (I spent most of my childhood in Klamath Falls, and we got a lot more thunder and lighting there, plenty to last me a lifetime!), but my fiancee grew up in Florida, near the coast, and she misses the thunderstorms. Go figure.

My own house power story: Just a few months ago, during one of those windstorms, the top half of the big fir tree in the driveway next to the house I co-own with my ex-wife fell over; it didn't do much damage to the house, but it did land on the power lines (from the street to the house) and pulled 'em right off the wall.

The power company hooked it all back up after my dad and I cleaned up the debris, and when they did, the power came back on -- but it was really weird, the lights would flicker bright on one side of the house, and dim on the other. That is, you could watch about every couple minutes and there was definitely a "connection" between the two, in that the bright flicker on one side and the dim flicker on the other side were at the exact same pulse.

Called the power company, they said, "It's a bad ground in the house, not our problem." Of course. So my ex-wife, who's living in the house, is outside on the porch one evening, watching the porch light flicker, and she hears, in time to the flicker, the transformer on the pole across the street is going "crack ... crack ... crackle ... crack ..."

My ex-wife just happens to be an electrical engineer with power line training. So she calls the electric company and gets to talk to one of the line engineers, says there must be a bad connection or short in the transformer, and manages to get a guy to come check.

And I don't know exactly what they discovered but apparently one of the two lines to the house was about 90 volts, and the other was 150.

So he does some voodoo on the connections or the transformer or whatever, and now it's all great. Of course, the power flicker burned out all the fluorescent light fixtures in the basement, but I figure we got off cheap.

[solarfox]

Most inexpensive surge protectors use a MOV (Metal Oxide Varistor) that 'blows up' and disconnects the power as it self destructs.

You're thinking of a fuse, not a MOV. MOVs attempt to shunt the excess voltage to ground when the voltage across them exceeds their rated threshold, but they don't interrupt the power.

What they do do, unfortunately, is gradually degrade a little further each time they suppress a spike, until the finally fail -- and when they fail, they do so in such a way that you can never really tell if they're still working or not. When a MOV fails, it almost always fails "open", i.e. it becomes an extremely high resistance that's effectively an open circuit.

The problem is, a normally-working MOV will also read as an open circuit when the voltage across it is below its trigger threshold, and there's really no practical way to tell the difference with any kind of simple monitoring circuit. (About the only real way to tell is to impose a voltage across the MOV which exceeds its threshold and see if it suddenly starts to conduct.) So even if your surge-suppressor has an indicator light on it, it's totally useless and serves only to give you a false sense of security.

[Jeremiah58]

About 3 years, and UPS are connected to a computer via USB or serial (or LAN), and have software that will initiate a shutdown based on the variables (such as "shut down when only 4 minutes are left on the battery").

The software also has diagnostics and other information, so you can monitor the health and status of the UPS.

Thanks.
I've found APC UPS to be favorite brand here in Croatia, as well.
UPS has been on my wish list for a long time, because we have too many storms and power-off during a year.

[redwudz]

solarfox, correct. I should have read the article I linked to. I changed it to '... directs the power to ground..'

[Nelson37]

I should lay out the APC guarantee as I have seen it in action.

In the event of surge or lightning strike damage :

PC technician or other qualified professional makes out a work order with an estimate to repair or replace damaged components. Software install is not covered, no data, only damaged hardware. If the estimated repair is higher than Fair Market Value, they pay fair market for the box, sometimes they pay for shipping parts to them, mostly they just say "keep it".

They do pay labor to install the parts, but nothing for software install, even drivers.

They determine value by going on E-bay and averaging selling price for similar units and age, pretty reasonable. Customers never unhappy with settlement amount.

In the six or seven APC damage claims I have had in 15 plus years in the lightning strike capital of the world, I have never had a claim disputed and payment has always been received within 30 days, all but two within two weeks. Many times that number of damage from all other brands, I have never heard of any other company making any payment of any kind, ever. I am not at all stating that it does not happen, just that with the frequency of strikes and surges around here I would think I would have heard of just one.

While all the other brands make up roughly 50% of real surge suppressors, something that sells for slightly more than $9.95, and perhaps 40% of battery units, that I see, all that fits in the category "not APC" accounts for well over 90% of the probable surge damage events I run into. Using dollar amount as a rough estimate of damage I would have to put the "Non-APC" total at around the 95 to 98% range. Continuing that thought, if you consider the dollar amount of damage minus payments received, then the "Non-APC" group accounts for 100% of customer losses in PC equipment.

There is a major APC distribution center in this area, they are very well represented on store shelves locally, all my regular customers already have APC units and not the other brands. But I still see a lot of the others, same work order procedure as APC but not one single payment that I know of.

I do not work for APC in any way. I have had customers witnessing their first lightning storm literally shut down a small office of 3 to 5 PC's, and when I say run I mean RUN down to Ofice Depot or whatever and purchase 3 to 5 APC backup units.

One pretty big customer was going to have his own guys unpack and install the units, fine with me its not hard, kind of silly to pay a tech to do this. Plus he's cheap. But his guys did not get them on for three weeks and he took what was believed to be a strike on his 80-unit four-story metal boat barn that sits on high ground and it fried just about every unit not already on an APC. No damage to APC units. He lost about 3 grand on the units that did not have the APC's installed, by "his guys". So when I installed the 4 new PC's I specifically asked him if he wanted to pay me for roughly one-half hour to install the 4 APC's, still in the box, or if he wanted "his guys" to hook them up later. Ah, 5 years later this still gives me a nice, warm feeling.

[dcsos]

Whats a UPS???

What Can Brown Do For You?

Thats what GREAT BRITAN wants to KNOW!!

re:
MOVIEGEEK wrote:
UPS:is that like Fedex?
tongue.gif

Seriously,I have a surge supressor but I have no use for a UPS because I always save whatever I'm working on.

Yeah, but I ship my stuff DHL cause it's cheaper. As for computer I've got a surge protector but that's it

Later

[EddyH]

Why yes... yes I do.

It's a laptop, it has a battery built in, and a low voltage power supply input that would hopefully soak up most of any meaningful surge before it could break anything.



Was using the "UPS" on it earlier in fact, when i wanted to wander the house doing some stuff whilst still browsing the interweb for something... such awesomeness is almost worth the asking price.