Power Up Your Home Office
 By Terry M. Blair

What would happen if electrical power suddenly died for your home office? Or if a sudden electrical surge shot through your computer and its connected peripherals? Or more likely, what if there was a flicker or lull in the stream of electricity, briefly cutting off the lifeblood of your office equipment?

Can you afford to lose unsaved data in your computer’s memory? Can you afford to risk damage to your computer or peripherals?

We take so much for granted these days that we’re typically shocked when the lights go out or the power flickers or surges. If these possibilities scare you, there are products to help return you to that happy state of complacency, confident that you needn’t worry about such stuff again.

An uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) is designed to safeguard against those hazards. Although UPS devices once were nearly the exclusive domain of large corporations, advances in technology and falling prices have brought the solution well within reach for today’s increasingly computerized home office.

A UPS device is more than a surge protector on steroids, although it is that too. It doesn’t merely protect your equipment from power surges, it also ensures a virtually uninterrupted supply of power if the main source of electricity flickers or dies.

Depending on how stalwart the UPS, it can buy you enough time to safely preserve data, quit your software applications and turn off your computer, or it can allow you to even continue working for some length of time.

This all is accomplished by a battery with circuitry to regulate the flow of electricity to your equipment and to provide a temporary source of power should the main source sputter or fail. The device is located between the main power supply, such as your wall outlet, and your equipment, such as your computer.

There are UPS devices for all budgets and needs, and many come with extra bells and whistles you may find worth the extra cost.

Here’s a brief buyer’s guide:

• Most small businesses can make do with a standby UPS, the kind that kicks in within micro-seconds when it senses a loss of continuous power from the main source. Standby units are smaller and generally much less expensive.

• A more costly and powerful variety of UPS actually provides the continuous source of electricity without even a micro-second gap. These are larger and more costly units.

• UPS devices absorb small power surges and smooth out noisy power to ensure a reliable, steady supply of electrical energy to your equipment.

• One of the greatest appeals is that UPS units buy you time to manually quit whatever you are doing and turn off equipment properly so that a brownout or blackout doesn’t damage your software or gear.

• The latest models have a feature that automatically shuts down your computer to avoid potential operating system problems when the main power suddenly fails. Some provide 10 or 15 minutes, and more expensive models longer periods.

• Additional features (usually for more money) include monitoring to display the voltage and current used by equipment and voltage on the line, and even alarms to alert you to errors in your connected electrical network.

One caveat: Some believe that connecting a UPS to regular surge protectors (often included in power strips) can harm your equipment. The best way to know is to ask the manufacturer whether power strip surge protectors are compatible with the UPS unit you are buying.

The more features on your UPS device, the higher the price you will pay. Prices range from a low-end of below $100 to several times that amount for more industrial strength protection for larger, more complex computer networks.

There are numerous manufacturers of UPS systems and accessories. The largest vendor of small UPS devices is American Power Conversion, www.apc.com. Belkin, www.belkin.com, a manufacturer of a wide variety of computer-related products, is another quality manufacturer. APC’s Web site offers a helpful tutorial to step you through the decision-making process so you can choose the UPS device best suited to your office needs.

(Posted February 2006)

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