Uninterruptable Power Supplies
 

Anyone here have experience with them? I live in an area of Florida where storms and lightning happen all the time. During storms, I might get a surge that knocks out my electricity for 5 seconds, which is terrible for a desktop.

Last week, I lost about $2000-$2500 worth of electronics due to a lightning storm. Killed my HDTV, desktop, house phone, literally blew my router off of the table it sits on... Anyway, my desktop and monitor were actually plugged into a UPS. The lightning killed the UPS and the desktop. It was a Tripp Lite UPS that had some $100,000 protection warranty. I called them and asked WTF and they basically gave me a run-around about how they need to verify the house has proper wiring and blah, blah, blah before they honor the waranty.

Does anyone have enough experience to recommend a UPS that actually does its job? I don't care about the price. It will only be connecting my desktop and monitor. The desktop has a 500W power supply. I really don't care what the battery life on it is, as long as it will not let my **** get bodied by lightning.

Don't you mean uninterruptible power supply?

Enough of a smartass, what in/outputs do you have? I had a UPS with one IEC 60320 C14 input and three C13 outputs and it worked fine without any issues 2 years long, then I moved towns and didn't need it anymore.

In the general sysadmin/netadmin world, APC seems to be the standard UPS to go to. I currently use a CyberPower UPS to keep a rack alive consisting of a 250W 24-port PoE switch, 8-port router, and a Dell PowerEdge R220. I have yet to fully test this UPS however it seems to function nicely. If you aren't using a rack, I'd probably go with APC and get a simple box-based UPS rather than a 1U/2U rack-mount UPS.

APC seems to have a calculator to find a specific unit based on your needs.

I have an APC Back-UPS Pro-1500 that works nicely. I have a bunch of stuff plugged into it (PC, two monitors, sonos, router) and it works fine whenever the power goes out. Hope you get your $$$ back

Surge Protectors/UPS often have a maximum joule rating that they protect against. A direct Lightning strike is usually a lot more powerful than that rating.

I use these at work - http://amzn.com/B000OFXKFI

Just don't plug a printer into them, or any other device that uses a lot of power in not a lot of time.