What good is a UPS? (uninterruptible power supply)

[undeterred]

What good is a Surge Protector?

[TroubleMan]

1. A UPS lets your computer stay on when you have a brief power outtage

Let's just say you were doing something important on your computer, when you have a slight brown out or black out. Without a UPS, your computer will reboot causing you do loose everything you were working on. I just had this happen to me. I was burning a CD, when we had about a 5 second outtage. It frisbeeed it.

A surge protector will protect your power supply and mother board from a surge in power (well...most of them).

[Gato Moteado]

2. yes, my UPSs are invaluable

they have saved my computer from crashing many a time here in costa rica where power outages are not uncommon.

[undeterred]

3. What about for a hub or a switch?

At work ours are just plugged in to power strips.

[TroubleMan]

4. You can plug them into a UPS, too...just not a printer

Especially a laser printer....never plug that into a UPS.

Switches and hubs going down will only give your network a brief downtime. The fastest are back up in less than 5 seconds, and the slowest take at the most 45 seconds.

However, it's better if you have the hubs and switches plugged into a UPS, too. It's just better, because turning anything electrical on and off quickly can break it.

[undeterred]

5. Thank you

I asked our network admin about it today and he made fun of me.

Everything in our whole office, in fact in every office in the whole company is just plugged into power strips. I worked in another company where they used them on every computer and server, so its a little hard for me to understand the inconsistency.

[Kali]

6. I just put in my third modem for this computer

surge protector MAY be protecting the machine but it sure doesn't protect my modems! (or maybe it does and it gets worn out?)

A friend just put on on their whole house because they lost two computers, a well pump and a garage opener.

[Solon]

9. Some have jacks for phone lines...

So that the surge will not go to the modem.

[Kali]

12. both of my dead modems were going through the phone jacks

on surge protectors - both times there was no damage (that I know of) to the computer itself but the modems quit.

[jmowreader]

7. An UPS is THE BEST surge protector there is

Here's why: When your computer is hooked to an UPS, it's actually battery powered. The UPS continually charges the battery.

Now here's the trick: the battery pile in the UPS absorbs all the surges, spikes, transients and other crap in your local electricity. All that comes out of it is nice clean AC.

You must have an UPS if you have a Unix machine. There are a pile of files a Unix machine opens when it runs, and a power failure can munch any one of them. Munch a system file, your Unix box won't work anymore. This goes equally for Linux and Mac OS X machines.

You also need one on an XP machine. Same reason.

You should have one on a pre-Win2000 Windows machine or pre-OS X Mac.

What good's a surge protector? It gives you enough sockets to plug your whole computer in.

UPSes are very good things to have. My aquariums are plugged into one--if I lose power, I won't lose fish. My tattoo artist plugs his tattoo machine power supplies into UPSes--he says having your machine stop before you want it to will just piss you off. (The room light is plugged into one too.)

[Kali]

13. ah ha! good to know - thanks

guess that will be my next surge protector! I KNOW the lines out here are ancient (the phone line is at least 45 -50 years old, I don't know when the electric went in or when it was ever redone, though they did recently replace the meter and we rewired the house about 15 years ago.

The real bummer? I think 7 huge fiberoptic communications cables pass through here within about 100 yards of house but no way to tap in! (unlike the 16 inch natural gas line we actually have a meter off of!)

[DS1]

8. Everyone should have one. It's not only a surge protector

which by itself would just make your computer take a big shit on itself while crashing due to the sudden power loss, but it'll keep your system on long enough for it to be shut down by a cable connection from the back of the UPS to your computer


But the best protection it provides is line cleaning. Power comes off the street with all sorts of spikes, dips, lulls, and other bad shit your computer doesn't need to be dealing with, the UPS makes it run nice and smooth. An analogy would be like taking an iron to a wrinkly shirt, the wrinkles would be the power spikes, the end result is a nice clean power source for your computer.

Don't compute without one

[undeterred]

10. Thank you

I don't think most people really understand the purpose of one and just see it as unnecessary. I don't know if my company will buy them for every computer but I figure the network equipment is the most expensive equipment- its worth a few hundred dollars to protect 20K worth of switches and hubs.

[Wcross]

11. I don't know the best but I plug my alarm clock into mine....

I have never been late to work! I used to have two wind ups for insurance, now I am confident enough in my ups to rely on it.