UPS

[Bugsy]

As someone who is currently suffering from repeated power failures does anyone have experience, or use, an Uninterupted Power Supply ?

There are plenty about for commercial use but they are expensive and not really suitable for home use. I only want to protect my computers.

[Pickles]

I have used UPSs in the past. It really depends on what you want them to do - and in particular, for how long you want them to power your equipment. Basically, the longer the period that you wish to be able to run your equipment for, the more expensive the UPS will be, because it is the storage capacity that is the expensive bit. All UPSs will give you superb protection against surges. You can get cheap UPSs for around £100 which will keep a PC alive for 30-60 minutes - I used one of these to protect an important server. It protected the machine from nasty electrical spikes that came through the power lines, and came with software that would get the machine to shut itself down (hence giving a "normal" graceful shutdown rather than a hard-disk-corrupting instant-power-off) before the juice ran out. If you need to run for longer, rather than getting a bigger and rather more expensive UPS, you might be better investing in a cheap portable generator. At least a small, cheap UPS would give you the time and opportunity to get the auxiliary generator going.

EDIT: I have just seen the APC ES700VA UPS on the Dabs.com site for £70 inc VAT

Regards

Pickles

[Clair]

[quote user="Pickles"]I have just seen the APC ES700VA UPS on the Dabs.com site for £70 inc VAT[/quote]

Here it is In Euros: http://www.amazon.fr/APC-Back-UPS-ES-700-Onduleur/dp/B000FM7C7C

[Bugsy]

Thank you both,

I have a surge protector (who doesn't in France [:)])

That bit of kit looks ideal.

Gary.

[Iceni]

We have been using APC UPSs for several years for our computers/monitors. When the batteries die we will probably choose to replace the units as they were bought in UK and thus take only UK plugs.

IMHO necessary bits and money well spent.

John

[Pierre ZFP]

I second what pickles has said.  UPS is much cheaper than it once was and £100 or so will keep a high end PC going for 30 mins or so.  Note that many of these UPS do not offer telephone line protection so you will still need separate protection for that.

The only problem with a portable generator is that most are 'recoil-start' so you have to be on site to start it.   I was looking recently for a colleague who was thinking about a generator for back-up power for her fish tank (serious fish tank), the cheapest auto-start gen I could find was around £1000  !!

[Pickles]

[quote user="Pierre ZFP"]The only problem with a portable generator is that most are 'recoil-start' so you have to be on site to start it.   I was looking recently for a colleague who was thinking about a generator for back-up power for her fish tank (serious fish tank), the cheapest auto-start gen I could find was around £1000  !![/quote]

Yes: to be honest I was thinking simply of the UPS giving time to respond physically and in person, hence when the UPS is used, it gives a breathing space to sort out the problem (eg by manually starting up a portable generator) whilst also automatically invoking software on the PC that will give a graceful shut-down if the user is not around or fails to restore power from whatever source. As you say, automatic generators are in a different league.

Regards

Pickles