Q: Do I Need An Uninterruptible Power Supply?

A: An Uninterruptible Power Supply is a battery backup system that will keep your computer (or whatever is plugged into it) from going down during a power sag, surge, or brief outage.  You can get one at your local electronics store that will protect a single computer and monitor for around $50.  These are cheap insurance and highly recommend them for every computer.  Just imagine a lightning strike after you've been working on a document for an hour and haven't saved.  Worse - think of a power surge frying your computer or hardware.  APC is a great brand, and comes with software that will automatically do a graceful shutdown of your computer if the battery backup gets low. 

While you're buying one for your computer, grab a spare for your network equipment- your cable/DSL modem, and router.  They seem particularly susceptible to power surges.  Any time we have a major thunderstorm in our area I know that my phone will be ringing the next morning from people with fried equipment.  Be smart and invest in a UPS rather than replacements for some of your existing computer gear.

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