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Another thing about UPS's. If you live in an area that has brown outs, your UPS will still maintain the appropriate level of electricity. I would suggest the 400. I have a 1500 which also tells my mac pro to shut down when I have 10 minutes left of power. Nice feature.
 
Help.

Right, I need to buy a UPS now!

Heres the iMac's power requirements again (I want a 24" iMac by the way)

Electrical and Operating Requirements
Line voltage: 100-240V AC
Frequency: 50Hz to 60Hz, single phase
Maximum continuous power: 200W (20-inch models); 280W (24-inch model)
Operating temperature: 10° to 35° C (50° to 95° F)
Storage temperature: -40° to 85° C (-40° to 185° F)
Relative humidity: 5% to 95% non-condensing
Maximum altitude: 3,000 m (10,000 feet)

Iv'e found this surge protector on Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-800V...3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1227600149&sr=8-3
Please reply back to me telling me if it is compatiable with my iMac or if not can you please give me some links to other UPSs that will work.

Please help me, I'm confused :confused:
 
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Buy a UPS with AVR, a pure battery backup will likely be pointless and useless unless you have the computer on the light switch and people keep turning out the light as they leave the room.

A battery backup/surge suppressor for $60 sounds like a bargain until you find out it doesn't work and your machine still shuts down.

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Quite a few UPS spec sheets will have a Output (Watts) that it'll deliver.

As far as trying to find one that will shut down the computer when you are gone, it isn't always needed, since the machine will likely run a day on quite a few UPSs while sleeping (unless you have a bunch of other stuff on the same UPS) -- Once the machine wakes up it might only last 5-10 minutes if you get one that barely supports the machine alone (aka 80+% of UPS output.)
 
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Basic surge suppressor like that ...

It'll work with whatever you plug into it, standard surge suppressors like these should be on most sensitive electronics -- tvs, high price stereo, computer, etc.

If nothing else the noise filter should capture some of the fluorescent light (energy bulb) and fan noise that can cause problems.

Not 100% guarantee it'll make the computer safe during a storm, but the noise filtering helps day to day more.

Just try not to use them as outlet breakout boxes and add fluorescent lights or fans on the strip, defeats the purpose of the noise filter and may cause you to have a unstable computer.
 
I just picked up an UPS by TrippLite a few weeks ago from Costco. It's $89 but it's definitely worth the investment. Ever since I got the UPS, we had several wind storms and snow storms in Seattle. During the storm, the power flickered on and off, and it did switch to the UPS power source during a brief moment. If I didn't have my UPS, the iMac would probably just shut down.

The biggest reason I picked up the UPS was that I had to "hard" restart my iMac when the connected bluetooth trackpad and keyboard failed to wake up the iMac. And after the hard restart, Lion will no longer boot, and I had to reinstall Lion completely. Just imagine what would happen if the power goes out all of a sudden. You could lose all of your work, and may caused the OS to crash.

To me, surge protector is just a power strip with additional outlets. It won't give you much protection. But an UPS will. The one I got also has a USB connection going to the iMac so you can program it in OS X (in Energy settings) to have the computer automatically shut down if the battery is below a certain % or time remaining. Good luck.
 
A surge protector can be helpful in certain circumstances. Its some extra protection. Why take a chance being that surge protrectors are inexpensive and your Imac is expensive.
 
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