Opps, I Should Have Bought That UPS By The Producer SoBeGirl's Erik Power failures and computers don't mix. It is a common occurrence here in Florida since we are in the tropics and get frequent thunderstorms throughout the year. Consequently, Florida also lays claim to having the highest number of lighting strikes when compared with any other state in our great nation. Power outages happen all the time out here and protecting expensive equipment and valuable data is something you should take very seriously. Doing so only takes a few hours of forethought and only a little more than one hundred bucks.  UPS stand for "uninterruptible power source". Anything from fallen trees to a raccoon getting fried on a power pole can render your home or office powerless. These are just a few good reasons that should cause you to get a good UPS, there are many more. Best reason of all is to protect the expensive operating system that resides on your computer and to save the critical data contained therein.  It is possible that sudden shut downs due to a loss of power can trash certain critical files on your system which will prevent your computer from booting up for subsequent sessions. If you are unfortunate enough to have this happen to you then you will be kicking yourself stupid for not shelling out the 100 plus bucks it costs for a decent UPS. They are simple to install, easy to configure and can be found at most local computer center right near your home. Last week I fell victim to not having this critical piece of power protection hardware and have since done my homework on what to look for when getting one.  I was working on my FTP server when all of the sudden the power went out. It was one of those short power failures commonly referred to as a "brown out". Brown outs may happen several times a day. Frequently they are so quick you don't even notice. Maybe a slight drop in voltage that causes no harm. Sometimes they are just long enough to cause your computer to shut down unexpectedly and this is when the problems can start.  When this happened to me while I was tinkering with my FTP server, the Linux operating system boot sequence file got corrupted and my FTP server was all but dead for the moment. Several retries later and it was obvious that my little baby was not going to mount the hard drive or any other hardware for that matter. I had to call my UNIX man for some late night open-heart surgery on the Linux Kernel. Pretty silly considering it all could have been avoided if I had simply installed a UPS between my computers and the electrical socket in the wall. First thing next morning I went to COMP USA and bought a UPS for my system so that this would not happen again. It now is a valuable and necessary piece of hardware that will be included with any mission critical pieces of computer hardware SoBeGirl owns.  So what kind of UPS should you buy? Most likely the one you will find in the local computer store right where you live. I checked them out the other day and the two most common brands I found where the TrippLite SmartPro USB and the American Power Conversion (APC). Each company makes a few different types and usually the bigger in size they are the more expensive they get. This is because a UPS is really just a sophisticated battery power pack. The bigger the battery the longer your appliances will run without power from your cities grid and the more pieces of hardware you can run at the same time. So if you have just one computer you will be just fine going with the smallest UPS available. Battery backup running time is approximately 15 minutes. Plenty of time to for you to safely shut down your machine and avoid any major problems associated with computers and power failures.  I was able to test both manufactures' UPS systems because SoBeGirl has a few APCs and I got my brother the TrippLite. The first thing you notice when unpacking your new UPS is how heavy it is for such a small package. That's because it is just one big sophisticated battery. About the size of 1.5 car batteries it weighs about what you would expect. Both UPS come discharged from the factory so before you decide to set them up and unplug the system from the wall as a test, charge the battery up first. Give it a good hour or so before you start messing around to see if it really works.  Not a necessity for your new UPS to work but a nice fun tool if you have the time are the power management software packages that come bundled with both systems. Each of them allows you to monitor power levels when your computer is running off the battery backup. This comes in handy when you are working on a project and suddenly the power goes out. You want to continue to work right up until the last bit of voltage is left. Sounds pretty risky but, if you like to live on the edge then go right ahead. I actually had the time to check out how this worked with the APS and I must say the voltage meter which displayed my usage, power level remaining, and time left was right on the money. It is a feature that workaholics like I just love.  Some other cool features both systems offer is that of automatically shutting down applications when there is a power failure. I tested the TrippLite with Microsoft Word and CorelDraw. I had the two applications open and not so subtly unplugged the system from the wall. Once the UPS went into safe mode (battery backup) it went on to continue any operations currently take place and then exited the applications one by one and then shut down the computer. Pretty cool to watch all this happening automatically and good to know that I will not have to rush back to my computer when I am in the shower or washing my car and the lights go out. For around 100 bucks the security and piece of mind a UPS delivers is well worth the price.  SoBeGirl is the Webs leading provider for adult video streams and pics. With over 100 hours of high quality video streams in several popular formats and thousands of pics SoBeGirl is the choice for those that know how to make money on the Net. Nobody offers more free content previews than SoBeGirl. So please stop by and check out the goods at http://www.sobegirl.com