Dallas wrote:
i jusat rememberd, less than 2 hours away from edison doing
maintenance of the neighborhood - power will be off from 10:00
5:00. now as long as the pc is off, are there any problems ahead ?
i doubt it, but want to make sure.

Shenan Stanley wrote:
What?

Since most are unlikely to live where you do...

Anyway - whether or not you have surge protection (best would be a
Universal Power Supply (UPS) with Auto Voltage Regulation (AVR)
technology) for your electronics and/or home - my suggestion is to
unplug from the wall any electronic equipment that is important to
you and not plug it back in until you know the maintenance is over
with and the power should stay consistent.
Also - I would suggest getting a UPS with AVR technology for each
of your sensitive/expensive electronic devices (Televisions, any
computer equipment, etc). Some equipment may not be able to
utilize the battery-backed up side - but those types of equipment should
be fine plugged in
elsewhere (some printers have trouble in this way.)

Dallas wrote:
thanks so much shenan, but since i forgot, it's too late for the
stuff other than the ups - i do have the ups hooked up, but i
didn't think it would last for 7 hours

Shenan Stanley wrote:
The purpose of consumer UPS is not to keep a home user up and going
for long periods of time - but long enough to properly shut down.

I was not implying you should have UPSes to keep things up - but
because a UPS with AVR technology will provide your equipment with
cleaner power and have a better response time to surges/brownouts
than a plain surge protector (which is often nothing more than a
mechanical device - a fuse - which prevents "too much" of the surge
from getting to your equipment) - better protect your equipment
from the unexpected outages.
In other words - your equipment is better served with something
like a UPS with AVR than cheap surge protection alone for
unexpected outages and if you know power will be out and suddenly
turned back on at some point - it's best to plan for that
accordingly and unplug valuable devices so there is no danger of a
surge at all to said equipment. Something not plugged into a wall
outlet is 99.99999...% less likely affected by such things than
something plugged into the wall outlet. ;-)

Dallas wrote:
agaion thanks shenan so are you saying i should power down the pc,
then unplug the ups ? i have already done the other devices not pc
related.
sorry as i am kinds out of it

If I was in your position, I would power down the computer, unplug and turn
off the UPS until the power was restored. I would do the same for any
network devices connected to the computer (router, modem, etc) as I see no
reason to chance their frying either.

While some may argue that with today's modern power distribution systems,
etc - you are fairly safe leaving it plugged in (and are likely correct) -
there is certainly no one who could argue they are less safe from electrical
surges powered down and unplugged. ;-)

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html