Power Play
We had two power failures before breakfast this morning, continuing an annoying trend that's manifest itself during the summer. These outages last only a second or two, but that's plenty of time to shut down my computer system and wreak havoc with the accuracy of our clocks without battery backup.
I don't know the reason for these outages and, frankly, I don't care. Or at least I won't once my new UPS arrives. I should have done this long ago, for a variety of reasons, but the annoyance factor has now escalated into the danger zone and I'm fearful for the life of my livelihood.
I chose a consumer-level model UPS from APC, one of the best-known makers of such products. APC has a great feature on its website, a product selector that allows you to input your system configuration and power needs. It then provides three recommended products ("best value," "best price" and "best performance") for comparison purposes.
The model I chose provides for 20 minutes of run-time in the event of a power failure, but the time itself isn't as important as the current conditioning and ability to bridge and smooth over those seconds-long outages that now seem to be a part of everyday life.
One more good feature of the APC website: it allows you to create a shopping cart via its website, using its suggested retail pricing, but then gives you the option of transferring that shopping cart and its contents to one of several online retailers (including its own APC Online Store). This is a great example of business symbiosis, and it's good for the consumer. In my case, I chose to transfer to CDW, which sells the APC UPS for almost 10% less than the MSRP. (Of course, the downside is that I'm now an enabler of those lame CDW TV commercials, the ones with the obnoxious one-man IT department whose only apparent skill is dialing up CDW.)
Technorati tag: UPS
I forget when my stuff on my laptop doesn't work properly (stuff being games that would work on a non-laptop!), that there are advantages to having one in situations such as yours :-).
Posted by: Rachel at September 6, 2005 05:12 PMMr. Freen, I hate to whine in light of what some people are going through, but it does seem like our power grid is showing some signs of stress, for whatever reasons.
Rachel, I, too, have a notebook computer and it's a comfort to know that I have access to it if the power's off for a while...but it's not my primary machine and it doesn't do me that much good from a work perspective.
Posted by: Eric at September 6, 2005 05:53 PMOne word: Squirrels (the root of all evil)
Posted by: julie at September 7, 2005 02:23 PMOne word: Squirrels (the root of all evil)
Well, if one of 'em is frying every time we get a power blip, I'd say the population is decreasing faster than the little beasts can breed! ;-)
Actually, that sounds like a pretty good theory. I hadn't considered that possibility.
Posted by: Eric at September 7, 2005 02:43 PMAbout the publisher
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You're not alone, Eric!
Intermittent power failures seem to be plaguing everyone and it's getting worse. I don't have any stats for that, but I keep hearing it from everyone I know, pretty much across the country.
The power "skips" have gotten so bad a couple of my friends have bought UPS units for their game systems. There's something wrong when people have to plug their XBox or PS2 into a UPS. The first time I saw someone's console sitting on top of a Lite On, I didn't have to ask why. I already knew.
Granted, your power needs are infinitely more serious, but still...
At the risk of sounding like the proverbial cranky old man, reliable power delivery wasn't always such a problem the way it is now.
Nobody ever needed a UPS in the "2600" days or even in the "SNES" days.
Posted by: Mr. Freen at September 6, 2005 03:04 PM