What's the difference between an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and a surge protector? Thanks. Much appreciated, ----Oompah.

Two completley different pieces of kit doing different jobs. A surge protector will protect you euqipment from suffen surges, spikes and brown outs. Spikes are caused by nearby high power euipment switching, like fridges, central heating and anything with an electric motor. A surge protector will also go a long way to protecing you from lightining strikes. You can also get surge protectors that will protect you telephone and network hardware. Brownout is when there is a short term drop in voltage which only lasts in for a few seconds. This can be caused by the power station switching generators. It can sometime be followed by a surege as the new generator settles down. An uninteruptable power supply is used on mission critial applications such as network servers where a sudden total loss of power could be disaterous. The consists of batteries that are on a constant charge. As soon as there is a loss in power the interruptable power supply switches in and powers the equipment. Not for long, but long enough to do a graceful shutdown and possible bring up a stand-by computer. Surge protectors are cheap and are a worthwhile investment. Uniteruptable power supplies are more expensive and are normally only used when they are needed. Stuart

Um.. only a ups can do anything about a brown out. It supplies extra power during the brown out to keep voltage levels even. A surge protector can't do that or anything with a brown out except pass thru the lack of current. You can buy a ups for $50 which is the price of a good surge protector. I use both at home.

> surge protector can't do that or anything with a brown-out << It can if it has a big enough capacitor. I was once using my computer when there was a brown out. So much so the the VDU shrunk to a fraction of its normal size, the TV went haywire, but the computer carried as if nothing had happened. It did have a capacitor as big as a coffee mug. Two in fact, wired parralel. Stuart

Stuart sorry u R WRONG and dead WRONG at that. The only thing that saved your comps was the good PSU in it... sorry The caps u speak up are in the psu not the serge pro. Now an energy regulator might do what u said but no one buys them because the UPS does the same thing for a fraction of the cost oh and FYI 2 X... a ups can and most do have built in serge pro and a ups almost never needs to b replace when u should b replacing your serge pro every 1 - 2 years

>> caps u speak up are in the psu not the serge pro. << The caps I speak of are in the surge protector. I know that because I put them there. You wont get capaitors the size of coffee cups in power supplies, but you might in a UPS. Besides the instance I speak off took place on a Tandy 1000 with a 8088 CPU. Hardly a state of the art CPU and power supply. While a good power supply may protect you from surges, it takes some pretty big capacitors to protect you from transient brown-outs. Stuart

let me get this... u put caps the size of cofe cups on a surge protector??? So they didn't come with it in the first place??? So your point about how a surge protector can save your system only works if you first void worranty and alter it ;) You go there... I would still say buy the ups... smarter choice... not all of us can or will do what u did or even want 2... 4 that :) but u go there