{"id":3058,"date":"2017-08-02T10:33:41","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T17:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=3058"},"modified":"2019-12-24T09:43:17","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T17:43:17","slug":"love-letter-to-a-battery-backup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=3058","title":{"rendered":"Love letter to a \u2026 battery backup."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dave Berkus\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Well, if you\u2019ve had a computer long enough, it has certainly happened to you.\u00a0 Power surges, power outages, surges upon reinstatement of power, low or high voltage from your utility (brownouts or surges.)\u00a0 I\u2019ve had all of these over the years and lost equipment from motherboards to microcells.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve lost data due to sudden power loss.\u00a0 I have worried over every wind storm or thunderstorm.<\/p>\n

So, several years ago I installed a whole-house surge protector in the master electric panel\"\" to help the individual surge protectors between plugs and all equipment.\u00a0 I had long-since added a battery backup for my dual-screen monitors and computer.<\/p>\n

But none of this helped in a recent power outage, when reinstated power blew the microcell, requiring a repurchase and days of no cell service inside my home (which is too far from public cells to get a single bar.)<\/p>\n

I searched for and found a solution that is one of the rare purchases of equipment that makes you actually smile when you open the package and install the equipment.\u00a0 Apple and Samsung do that with elegantly packaged, beautiful hardware, presented in a clean package with easy instructions and a \u201cwow\u201d user experience upon first use.<\/p>\n

Would you believe that this time, I got the same \u201cwow\u201d from a \u2026 battery backup?\u00a0 My \u201cold\u201d battery backup could keep my system running for four or five minutes, enough to quickly sign off and protect data.\u00a0 It did not do anything to protect against the surges that damaged my motherboard.\u00a0 This new unit, \u201ca sine wave battery backup\u201d from CyberPower, came wrapped as if it were an iPad, with plastic peel-off protection across the entire case, minimal and clean instructions, and then the surprise.<\/p>\n

An included USB cable connected my computer with the battery backup. After downloading the software, suddenly my computer began telling me information I never had before \u2013 the percent charge of the battery, the number of watts my system was drawing, the minutes of battery runtime available during a blackout, the variation in voltage coming from my utility.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 I could even set the acceptable voltage variation before the power protection in the unit took over and smoothed the sine wave to protect my equipment.<\/p>\n

Sine wave?\u00a0 That\u2019s the rest of the love story.\u00a0 I discovered that this is more than a battery backup.\u00a0 By smoothing the utility\u2019s signal into a very sensitive AC current wave (sine wave), my sensitive equipment and energy star certified electronics are actively protected for the first time.\u00a0And\u00a0I have 35-40 minutes of power in the same size case as my old backup.<\/p>\n

This unit even smells like a new car for now.\u00a0 But enough gushing about the features.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t, you will someday suffer power problems that will damage your equipment and perhaps destroy some or much of your local data. \u00a0Do you want to wait until that day to reform, and later write your own love letter to a battery backup?\u00a0 Didn\u2019t think so\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dave Berkus\u00a0 Well, if you\u2019ve had a computer long enough, it has certainly happened to you.\u00a0 Power surges, power outages, surges upon reinstatement of power, low or high voltage from your utility (brownouts or surges.)\u00a0 I\u2019ve had all of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-protecting-the-business"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}