UPS for lappy's protection?

My friend advice me to buy a UPS. He said it's for lappy's protection in case of electrical surge and my lappy is plug in electrical outlet. is this true? will it really protect my lappy? or is just a waste of money?

 

You don't need a UPS, you jsut need a surge protector, if you're worried about such things. For less than $10 it's probably a good investment. A UPS unit provides battery backup, something that a notebook doesn't need.

 

on the other hand ..... if you have frequent power outages a UPS can be usefull. I keep my modem and routers plugged into a UPS (and yes it also has a built in surge protector) - so in the event of a power outage I can still get on the Internet.

As mentioned a UPS is overkill for power spikes and outages from a 'protection' point of view. A decent home UPS can be had for around $100.00 - some of them even come with Software to execute a 'normal' windows shutdown when it kicks in.

The choices are almost limitless - all depends on your needs / budget / comfort level.

 

I'll just buy a surfe supressor. just to be sure that any electrical surge will not destroy my lappy.

thanks guys for your replies!

 

actually, an UPS is a great idea, and you can get a decent one now for 60 bucks at Staples or wherever.

I put mine on my desktops, and plug my notebook in there whenever I'm at home, gives surge protection plus battery backup (10 minutes to shut down normally on desktops). Not an UPS you can work on, but the combination of surge protection and battery backup, for $60, is well worth it.

 

I agree with CoffeeShark. I would never run my computer without a UPS. You're spending how many hundreds/thousands of dollars, and you're leaving it open to electrical surges? No thanks. I run a desktopt with a crt monitor and my laptop off of mine, so i've got a big one. I've owned several APC UPSes and I would highly recommend them. I've had friends suffer major losses as a result of not running their systems with a UPS.

 

right, UPS is good for desktops. not really needed for laptop, as it handles power fluctuations on it's own. If all you are interested in protecting is the laptop, a surge supressor is fine.

 

I was told that If you leave the battery in a laptop, that the combination of that and the power supply will act as a surge protector. So I don't think you really need one for laptops. Although I picked up one for $30 for my desktop. It will power on my computer and 19" and speakers for around 10 minutes if the power goes out. It also surges.

 

You were told wrong. The battery will NOT act as a surge protector. The power supply is the exact same as on a desktop, it's just external. Obviously, if power is lower, or "browns out", the battery will take over. Nothing about it is intrinsically protecting against surges. You really should use a surge suppressor for that.

As far as a UPS...obviously it's not entirely needed. However, if you live in a place with unreliable power, it's not a bad idea. If you experienced frequent fluctuations(brown outs and the like), the surge suppressor protects from surges and your battery will keep you from shutting down...but it'll be constantly switching from the powersupply to the battery. On most laptops, that split second where it switches over(say you pull the AC adapter), it doesn't really hang...but if you're processing something intensive, you'll often notice a bit of a lag for a split second. Newer laptops can respond pretty quickly, if it was occurring constantly, that wouldn't be good. A UPS would be appropriate then. Otherwise, it's just a peace of mind thing.

But a surge suppressor would be obviously required.

 

How is a laptops configuration different then a UPS? In a laptop you have a powersupply then it connects to your computer and runs through your battery, charging your battery and providing power for your computer. With a UPS, it does the same thing.

 

Well...a laptop doesn't have a built in surge suppressor like most UPS's will.

But the UPS, typically, has the large batteries. Your computer is pulling juice from the batteries. At least...if it's really "conditioning" the power, it is. The AC line is constantly re charging the battery. These are true UPS's...but some don't work this way. Many of the cheaper ones are SPS's(Stand by power supplies). They provide power from the AC line and only switch over to battery power when the AC power is cut. They work really fast, but that still leaves you a split second without juice. It's normally fast enough to not cause a problem...depending on what the computer's doing. That's how laptop's usually work. They pull power from the AC line, not from the battery. The switch over to the battery only when power is denied. Some might not work that way, so I can't be sure.

But a true UPS wouldn't suffer from that split second transition period, so it'd provide a more stable, consistent flow of power. That's how it's different.

Here's the drawback...UPS's lose juice. They obviously aren't 100% efficient. So a real UPS...it's maybe 80% efficient?(not sure on that...seems like a reasonable guess from my basic electronics education...sorry, I'm biomed engineering, not electrical). The power it takes from the AC, and converts to DC to charge the batteries, it takes more juice than the DC batteries put out. So you'll be sort of "wasting" power.

Since electricity costs just went up by like 30% here, I'll pass on that.