Deciding Whether to Plug Your Laptop into a UPS
When you choose your
laptop's final resting place - even if it's final only until
you find a new resting place - plug it in.
Attach the power cord to the laptop's back or side. On newer
laptops, the power cord connector may be color-coded yellow;
the yellow hole is where the power cord plugs in. Otherwise,
the power connector should be unique; it plugs in to no
other hole on the laptop.
Attach the power cord to the power brick, if you need to.
Plug the power brick into the wall. The power brick may also
contain the plug that connects directly to the wall.
That's it. The laptop is now ready for use!
You may want to consider investing in a UPS, or
Uninterruptible Power Supply, specifically one with both
surge and spike protection. This device both serves to
protect the computer from nasty things that can come through
the power lines, as well as to provide emergency power
should the electricity go bye-bye.
You don't really need a UPS for a laptop. The main reason is
that your laptop already has a battery. If you're running
your laptop from an electrical outlet and the electricity
goes off (or some doofus unplugs your laptop from the
outlet), the laptop quickly and happily switches its power
source over to the internal battery. You don't lose
anything!
Although you don't need a UPS for a laptop, you may still
want to plug your portable baby into a power strip with
surge protection and line filtering. This strip helps keep
the power your laptop uses clean and steady.
You may want to use a UPS for any external storage devices
that you connect to the laptop. For example, plug an
external disk drive into a UPS. You can also do well to plug
your DSL or cable modem into a UPS, as well as the router.
But you don't need to plug a scanner or printer into a UPS.
Generally speaking, if a lightning storm is raging nearby,
don't plug your laptop into the wall unless you're using a
spike protection filter. If you're not, then just run the
laptop from its battery until the storm passes.
By Laptops for Dummies
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