Uninterrupted power supply
April 12th, 2006 by Peter
OPTI-UPS 575VA UPS
An uninterrupted power supply is almost essential for the modern computer. The uninterrupted power supply allows you computer to brave through the worst of computer nightmares. With more and more things being stored on computer, both at home and at the office and uninterrupted power supply will protect you from common things like brownouts, spikes and other power anomalies.
The uninterrupted power supply from a normal, consumer grade UPS will usually give you a few features to protect you against varying levels of problems. The uninterrupted power supply might be held for up to 5 minutes, possibly much more, depending on how good your UPS is. This allows you to shut down the computer and save information before permanent damage occurs.
Temporary power drops or brownouts are not a big problem when you have an uninterrupted power supply. Quite often these anomalies will lead to the computer turning off, which presents 1 major problem for household computers. When the power goes off you lose all the data you were working on when the computer turned off. The steadying of the power supply provided with an uninterrupted power supply assures that this won’t happen in any other situation either.
The uninterrupted power supply also helps to smooth out spikes in voltage that most often occur during electrical storms. By sacrificing itself a UPS can provide a smooth uninterrupted power supply to your computer, protecting it from not only the loss of expensive equipment, but the loss of your, possibly your clients, valuable data.
An uninterrupted power supply can vary with the kind of UPS that you buy. A UPS will be rated in VA, with 500VA and up to 1000VA being enough for most home computers that do average tasks. The time they last will vary if you are using more powerful processors or video cards. The higher the VA the longer things will keep going after the power turns off. Most of the extra cost of these units goes into the batteries that are used to keep everything running.
Tripp Lite 1000VA UPS
Surge protection is expected with an uninterrupted power supply and most UPS’ will have this for both the equipment that is connected to the battery backup and those that bypass it, like printers and other peripherals.
Look out for indicators to tell you if the UPS is operating well, or if the battery has kicked in, or it has been damaged. If the battery is in operation is important to know how much time you have before everything shuts down. Another thing that happens is that a UPS can become damaged because of a power spike. The UPS will become damaged rather than allowing your equipment to receive the shock, but you need to know this has happened as usually afterwards it cannot take another big hit.
The uninterrupted power supply should have an interface with your computer so that it can be controlled and its features can be set, so that things will operate well in case of a power outage or other incident.
An uninterrupted power supply is becoming more and more of a necessity as more and more of our precious data is stored on computers. Having a UPS will allow you to breath easier when there is an electrical storm as you will be protected from what could happen without one.