Pertinent Perils

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For many, the summer months bring increased risk of power outages or power surges as peak air conditioning use strains aging utility grids. Protect your sensitive computer equipment and data with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). The UPS is an appliance that contains a battery that will continue to power your computer when it senses a loss of electricity from the primary source. If you are using the computer when the UPS chirps to announce power loss, you have time to save any files you are working on and have an orderly shutdown of the computer. In addition to protecting against data loss, a UPS can prevent a power surge from damaging your computer. Always use a UPS when you are relying on a back-up generator for power as the flow of current from the generator may not be entirely smooth.

The UPS appliance I have in my home office provides up to two hours of additional powered operating time. It has eight outlets: four for battery back-up and four that offer surge protection only. So, of course, I have my computer connected to the battery back-up outlets and use the surge protection outlets for my printer, scanner and other devices to protect them without consuming battery capacity. My UPS appliance also comes with a $150,000 equipment protection policy, so if my equipment is damaged from the power supply, my losses are covered. In order to ensure that the coverage remains in force, it is critical to have the equipment connected to the proper outlets on the appliance (i.e., the computer must be connected to the battery back-up outlet).

So in the event of power loss, I have two additional hours of work time from the UPS battery before I power down my computer and pick up my work on the laptop and tablet, which I keep fully charged at all times. And now, with increased use of mobile devices, it is important to protect the tablets and laptops as well, so I charge them through my UPS appliance to protect against damage from the power supply. In my community, we often have micro-outages between one and three o’clock in the morning – you learn of them when the clock on the over flashes “12:00 a.m.” the next morning. With the UPS appliance, I am not leaving anything to chance.