A UPS allows you to protect against power surges, and at the same time to keep fed, all devices connected to it (such as computers, monitors, televisions, game consoles, printers, scanners, etc.) to allow at least turn them off, also automatically, in the correct way. To do this, inside of the UPS there are simple battery (typically 12 V), a power supply (charging batteries) and an inverter (which generates current from the batteries).
One of the most overlooked when buying a new computer is the quality of the electrical lines that will feed our new “fireballs“. In fact, power lines bring into our homes current “dirty”, with a decline of conspicuous and dangerous voltage spikes that undermine the stability and health at the forefront of electronic components – such as the ones built into a personal computer – not to mention lightning or for complete power outages, due perhaps to the little-publicized work on the lines from the company supplying electricity.
At one time the UPS, called for convenience UPS (Uninterruptible Power System English by the acronym – Continuous Power System), they were extremely expensive and therefore recommended only to those who could not in any way waive protect their data: an engineer who had lost a project the result of months of study he would find himself in a situation far more serious than those who had simply had to rewrite an e-mail message to his girlfriend of the moment. Today, however, a device of this type is available to everyone with prices ranging between 70.00 dollars and the models typically “home”, designed to supply only the PC (not so the monitor or other peripherals), to professional models arriving to cost over a million dollars.
The right choice, as always, moreover, lies somewhere in between: a UPS can power the computer and monitor for the time necessary to close applications and save any open files, and perform a proper shutdown of the computer in the absence of power supply. Each UPS filters and “straightens” the input current, eliminating spikes and sags that may, as mentioned, damage the power supply and PC peripherals (especially hard drives).
The UPS units are also equipped with a serial port through which it is possible (using bundled software) to constantly check the status of the current and the UPS itself, through a window on the screen.
Our advice is to choose, however, an uninterruptible power supply for your configuration (PC + Monitor) that will have food, perhaps approaching the requirements for excess, for further expansions. From the point of view of the only protection from power surges, you can also restrict yourself to buy “filtered power strips”, which are easily found on the market and are specially designed to protect your computer.
They are relatively cheap, but they can certainly achieve the efficiency of a modern UPS, as well as being obviously useless when “there is no light.”