Thanks for the that Johann, very good advice!
Donna dm87
At 8:15 AM -0400 8/26/05, donnadm87 wrote:
I guess it is a matter of comfort. We experience frequent loss of
power, spikes, lightning strikes etc. I unplug everything and sleep
better when I don't have to watch out for my computers at night.
I recommend to all my clients that they get a UPS ("Uninterruptible
Power Supply" - basically a battery backup for your desktop) to address
power issues. I recommend even people with "good" power use one. It might
not allow you to leave the system on overnight, but it can really save your
bacon to just have a few minutes of grace time to save and shut down the
system during power outages while you are working.
I have purchased my last few at Staples - they do free delivery in
a lot of places. Look at their section "Home -> Technology -> Surge
Protection & Cables". I like the APC UPSs - depending on capacity they
range in price from $50 to $170 (APC Back-UPS BX 1200 - seems like a very
good value). A number of the "Back-UPS BE" models have coax surge
suppression if you have a cable TV internet connection. The "VA" or
"Volt-Amps" number is a measure of how much energy capacity the battery has
- the bigger the number, the longer you can run your equipment during a
power outage. I think that a number of APC models are only available
through Business Depot/Staples, so some of the model numbers might be
slightly different on the Staples website and the APC website.
<http://www.staples.ca/>
<http://apc.com/>
I have purchased replacement UPS batteries (they only last a few
years) from <http://www.mycableshop.ca/>, located in Whitby, just East of
Toronto.
<http://www.powerguardian.com/> has info about various UPS systems
under their list of supported hardware - any UPS will supply power to
things plugged into it, software and a communications cable are needed so
that your UPS can tell the computer what is going on so that the computer
can save files and shut down. PowerGuardian seems to be software that does
a bit more than the built-in UPS software that comes with Mac OS X 10.3 and
above.
--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://public.xdi.org/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *
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