[lotuseclat79]

Why you should invest in an uninterruptible power supply (2 web pages).

-- Tom

[JohnWill]

I have a total of seven UPS systems here, all the computer, my FiOS DVR, and my backup drive farm all have their own UPS.

I'm a believer.

[lotuseclat79]

Hi John,

The article this thread is about can't get a better endorsement than your post!

A few years back when my electric service surged and toasted nearly all of my electronics (including my electric meter which arced), only my computer survived thanks due to the surge protection I had in place.

That was a great teaching moment for me - now a confirmed believer!

-- Tom

[JohnWill]

You should also consider a whole house surge protector, which is wired into the main panel.

I had a floating neutral one say here, one side of the line was at 170 volts, the other was at 70 volts! The UPS systems were going nuts, but no damage. Several wall warts that didn't have surge protection bit the dust. My flat screen TV's must have been on the low voltage side, all of them survived!

I've seen this same flat take out thousands of dollars of equipment, and even helped one guy recover and make the insurance claims from the same failure.

[lotuseclat79]

Hi John,

What whole house surge protector do you have or would recommend?

-- Tom

[JohnWill]

This is the one I have, but I paid a lot less on eBay for a brand new one.

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/...45&marketID=34

[bp936]

I have a UPS that probably weighs 8 lbs. since 1993, and I still use it, every new desktop I bought, was plugged into it, by plugging first a Surge protector strip into it. desktop, printers, USB hub, scanner, and something else, (would have to follow cable) plugged into it. The second plug on the UPS has the monitor plugged in.

Whenever there is a brownout, UPS beeps crazily. During thunderstorms I still unplug computers.
Laptops are just plugged into a surge protector. I hope this way I would be ok, I lost everything too often in the early days.

John's suggestion to have the whole house protected, sounds really good, I wouldn't have to crawl behind the TVs to unplug them from the wall. We do get a lot of thunderstorms in the summer.

I also advise all my friends to get at least a surge protector, but none of them really believe me. I guess brown outs are usually not noticeable, I only know, when the UPS chirps. But I guess for a computer, it could be disastrous and one would wonder, why things don't work.

[JohnWill]

You should have surge protection on individual equipment as well as whole-house protection. Both have their place.