Jonbouy

jackn2mpu

Jonbouy

USE SURGE PROTECTION and a UPS on all the gear you love.

That's not you is it Herb?

You sound like one of those pesky, meddling government health and safety official types here that insist on prescribing what they decree is best for me despite my personal evidence to the contrary...

I agree with the phone lines being a bigger problem as equipment using the phone lines is only 12v DC rated (UK) and therefore obviously much more vulnerable to being fried by a surge.

But it would have been uneconomical for me to own either surge protection or a UPS or even a combined solution, so the jury is out on that one for me.  I can still afford to lose say a motherboard and a couple of hard drives and I'd still be in pocket over the price of a UPS.

I appreciate the cautionary stance though...

Are you saying an ups would be more expensive than a motherboard & a couple of hard drives? I find that hard to believe.

I'm talking cost of ownership over the 20 years I haven't needed to use a UPS.

Yes you could buy a UPS today for as little as £30 (much the same as a 500Gb hard drive) but the likelyhood I'd be using the same UPS I bought in 1990 is very slim and they were VERY expensive back then.

I'm not advocating not using a UPS, I'm just saying, as I did from the outset of this thread, it hasn't cost me a penny not having one.

So yeah, I'm saying that over that 20 year period I could be down around £200's worth of hardware today and I would still be in pocket.

My £500 computer is under warranty for a year it has to last 3 years to be viable within my budget, I'm happy to cater for something that's been a 20 year non-issue for me if the worst happens during that time.  Then maybe I'd re-appraise the costings.

I guess I don't love my computer gear enough to worry about it that much, it usually gets changed before it breaks, and between you and I, I think that's true for most of us.  Truth is I've never had a piece of computer hardware fail, unless it's been DOA or within warranty.  Lucky me.

As I keep saying that's just me though, if anyone wants to buy the insurance I'm OK with that too.

Jonbouy

With that kind of luck, I'd buy a Lotto ticket or two.

I bought a Lotto ticket once.

It spontaneously blew up in my hand and nearly took my eye out.

Guitarhacker


So yeah, I advocate the use of Surge Protected UPS systems for all the gear you love to love.  The UPS is so inexpensive these days, there is no reason not to have that protection on the gear. Probably more then the surges is the damage done with brown outs and power failures in the middle of working. The UPS kicks in immediately and keeps the voltage up to the proper levels to allow no data loss and no system crashes,

And I'm about as anti- government nanny state as you can be. If the government came out and legislated UPS's on every computer, I'd probably remove mine just for spite.

jackn2mpu

Guitarhacker


So yeah, I advocate the use of Surge Protected UPS systems for all the gear you love to love.  The UPS is so inexpensive these days, there is no reason not to have that protection on the gear. Probably more then the surges is the damage done with brown outs and power failures in the middle of working. The UPS kicks in immediately and keeps the voltage up to the proper levels to allow no data loss and no system crashes,

And I'm about as anti- government nanny state as you can be. If the government came out and legislated UPS's on every computer, I'd probably remove mine just for spite.

We don't get a lot of out-and-out power outages here but do get a lot of brownouts and what I call power blinks (power goes out just long enough for the ups's to start beeping and then just as soon comes back up to snuff). I've replaced one big ups twice because it did it's job and protected the studio equipment connected to it. That's about $750 total which is inexpensive compared to the $10000+ of equipment connected to it.

One thing not mentioned here is that not all ups's have their power output fed full time from the re-generated power done in the ups. Some are standby ups's that switch over when the incoming AC fails. And that happens so quick (usually less than a full 60Hz cycle of 16.67 ms) you and the computer will never notice it.

Even though they're not there they still play and I know I can restore them.