Workstation/Home Electronic Power Information

2/5/10 Workstation/Home Electronic Power Information

Originally at: http://www.ciosolutions.com/article/46-workstation-home-electronic-power-information

Written By: Mike Shinn

With power outages occurring and more expected due to the power, I’ve been receiving a lot of the same types of questions and problems. Typically we have provided or worked with our clients to make sure that their network and data are protected using proper power conditioners and battery backups. More and more I have been asked about personal desktop protection. Please feel free to pass along the following information to your staff as you like.

1) A traditional power strip costs around $10-20 and can be purchased virtually anywhere – these will not provide any surge protection whatsoever. They simply extend your wall outlet and give you more places to plug your computer or monitor or printer in to.

2) For $50-100, a personal UPS can be purchased that can provide you with surge protection for your PC and a short amount of battery life – good for most basic PC setups. You can tell the difference between a power strip and a UPS due to size (a UPS is large and bulky. (note: you can spend a little less for just a surge protecting power strip, but for a few bucks more it is often worth it to get the battery)

3) Laptops – most laptops are built with a power brick that does a fair amount of surge protection. The battery backup is the laptop’s battery!

4) If you have purchased a nice flat panel TV for home and are plugged directly in to your wall, it may be time to consider a UPS – it’s a good investment to protect the TV that you spent so much money on, not to mention that it’s nice not to have to reset the clock on your DVR or DVD player if you have a battery backup.

There are a lot of strategies behind backup power. For example, you may not want to plug your computer monitor into the UPS battery, just the surge protection, to make it last longer. We at CIO would be happy to assist with if you are interested – please let us know.