Backup Battery. Do you use it?

[Tatsujin]

(If a Staff member can do a poll for this thread please!)

I'm using a backup battery that runs without electricity for 15 minutes (or less) at maximum power. This baby saved me many times during it's lifetime with me for the past months. We lost electricity for like a mere seconds almost to two full minutes these past two months about 5 or 6 times, including today (it's raining like hell in Chicago).

Do you use it or not? I'm considering of purchasing another Battery for my external HDD's, PS3 and speaker system.

[Ixarku]

I use a battery backup.  I'm definitely happy I bought one.  Mine has saved me from unexpected PC shutdowns (and possible data loss or hardware damage) at least 4 times that I remember in the last year and a half.  In central Florida, especially at this time of year, thunderstorms are a very regular occurrence, and power surges and flickers (power dropping out for a second or two at a time) are pretty common.

[Arveene]

Can't add a poll to a thread.. at least I can't.

* Arveene shrugs.

I use a battery backup. I highly suggest APC to anyone who plans on getting one. I live in Michigan so we get a power outage every time it friggen snows. It's fun. If you don't get frequent outages/brownouts (I get a really short brownouts at least once a week), you probably don't really need one. I think that's what was causing my video cards to go dead all the time.

[Klocknov]

I will now be investing in one. I need to make sure I don't have my computer get killed by brown outs or surges, I have a good Belkin surge protector, but I think we have more problems with brown outs and power drops due to wind storms and stupid drivers... I have gone long enough without going this route so now I will probably be looking into grabbing one to throw both my boxes on like a 300 plus my radio(which makes me have the brown out suspicion due to how many times it has froze with no surge surge from the look of things..) so yeah will probably look into a 8 at min or 10 slot 300watt to backup my systems.

[WingZero8788]

I don't have any at this time but I'm going to be getting a couple for all of my electronic equipment.

[Arveene]

I will now be investing in one. I need to make sure I don't have my computer get killed by brown outs or surges, I have a good Belkin surge protector, but I think we have more problems with brown outs and power drops due to wind storms and stupid drivers... I have gone long enough without going this route so now I will probably be looking into grabbing one to throw both my boxes on like a 300 plus my radio(which makes me have the brown out suspicion due to how many times it has froze with no surge surge from the look of things..) so yeah will probably look into a 8 at min or 10 slot 300watt to backup my systems.

Make sure you get a quality UPS. (a good one will be at least $100, probably more) Most UPS will protect against overvoltages, but some of the cheaper ones won't protect your stuff from undervoltages. (brownouts) You might need more than a 300 watt to protect both systems.

[Klocknov]

So I may want to look into a 500 then??

[misachaos]

Ive been using Backup battery alot, but since all the hurricanes (Florida yay) Its in need of a battery change. but hey, 6yrs and it still works. Worth the money for saying your more expensive stuff. Rather shell out $150 for safety instead of $800 for another pc or whatever you end up losing.

Definitely need a place to hide its hugeness, but the new home theater ones from Monster are nice. I say buy one of those that monitors Voltage and stuff from monster. always found it useful if i had to many things on ^^".

[Sosseres]

I have been living here for close to two years now. One power outage, scheduled for maintenance. Where I lived prior to this, 0. Where I lived prior to that, only when lightning since it was a house a bit of a way out and the spikes occasionally brought it down for a sec or so. I like reliable power removing the need for backup battery.

[Tatsujin]

Ive been using Backup battery alot, but since all the hurricanes (Florida yay) Its in need of a battery change. but hey, 6yrs and it still works. Worth the money for saying your more expensive stuff. Rather shell out $150 for safety instead of $800 for another pc or whatever you end up losing.

Definitely need a place to hide its hugeness, but the new home theater ones from Monster are nice. I say buy one of those that monitors Voltage and stuff from monster. always found it useful if i had to many things on ^^".

Perfect example. Thank you. I blew over 1500 US dollars on my computer and I'd rather pay an extra 100+ dollars for a backup battery to protect my computer and equipment. I'm considering of purchasing a (low) grade computer (custom build) with Duo 2 Core, 2x (9800 nVidia video cards), I already have my old Ram (800Mhz Dual Channel Raptors, 4GB) and the other equipment won't be as big. I don't know ... I just don't want to sit there without a computer. I may seriously kill myself if that ever happens! It did happen few times and I was bored out of my mind ... =[ my computer is my best friend. Anyways, the one I have is 600 watts or something (no idea what it means). If you shell out around 100-130 dollars now you'll get something better than mine. I put 120ish dollar for mine and it is freaking super sweet. Also, whenever an outage happens it starts beeping (woke up me couple of times at night) and it will automatically put your computer to sleep (must have hibernate turned on ... how do you turn it on in Vista?!) .. it used to do that for me on my Windows XP Pro, but not on my Vista 64-bit.

[Klocknov]

On this system I had to turn of hibernate for stand-by due to system hangs when it was trying to come out of hibernation... My other box I dunno if I did it or not, though with how I built it I shouldn't have to worry about system hangs, and this one I don't think I need to worry about it either anymore due to cleaning some stuff up...

[misachaos]

Tatsu, in vista its located in Power Settings and options. Just make a custom power setting

[boxer4]

I got myself a free broken UPS about a year ago, it's a 1KVA model.  Course it was the batteries that were shot, so I had to buy a new set -- probably the biggest cost of a new ups.  Anyway since then, I've only had one 1-minute power outage and the UPS was able to carry through, saving a crash/reboot.  Since it's 1KVA it could carry through much longer, estimating around 45min to 1h reserve time before it runs out of energy.

The stupid thing is, I rarely get power outages here since power lines are buried in my neighborhood.

These larger models tend to have voltage regulation included.  So if line power drops somewhat, it will increase it a bit, and same with overvoltage - it will decrease it.  If it gets way out of whack in either direction, it will resort to using batteries.

[misachaos]

I got myself a free broken UPS about a year ago, it's a 1KVA model.  Course it was the batteries that were shot, so I had to buy a new set -- probably the biggest cost of a new ups.  Anyway since then, I've only had one 1-minute power outage and the UPS was able to carry through, saving a crash/reboot.  Since it's 1KVA it could carry through much longer, estimating around 45min to 1h reserve time before it runs out of energy.

The stupid thing is, I rarely get power outages here since power lines are buried in my neighborhood.

These larger models tend to have voltage regulation included.  So if line power drops somewhat, it will increase it a bit, and same with overvoltage - it will decrease it.  If it gets way out of whack in either direction, it will resort to using batteries.

Here due to all the hurricanes the buried power lines where having power problems and caused almost every other day the power to go out for 5-10 minutes. and due to some issues the Housing board couldn't fix the issue for a whole year so no one is safe from power outages.

[darren42]

i don't use any battery backups in my house, only surge protected powerboards

the power at my place is pretty reliable. we rarely ever have any blackout or brownout

[Proin Drakenzol]

I don't use an UPS in my barracks room, but we certainly have some pretty massive UPS on the ship for some of the equipment.

[darkjedi]

I'm using Liebert PSA. The damn thing can't run even for just 30 minutes even though I'm using only 650W. (so I guess NOT recommended) And I don't have backup for wifi.

I use AVR to increase the lifespan of the UPS because Philippines has power failure like 5-10 hours a month. Very intermittently. So I got a 2 KWh gasoline generator just for the rainy days. xD Hilarious.