This one is more for the beginners, but can serve as a reminder for everyone else. My mom just recently purchased a new PC and she decided to proceed with setting it up herself without having me do it for her (which I appreciated, BTW). With the new setup came a new UPS, and like most UPSes there are plugs which connect to the battery and other plugs which are just for surge protection. She had them plugged into the wrong ones. She had her printer plugged into the battery backup (something which I don’t recommend, BTW) and her PC plugged into the surge protection plugs. Obviously, this was a mistake on her part. In the event of a power outage, her PC would just die and the printer would sit there ready to go. Not very useful. So, the simple tip is this: check your plugs and make sure that your PC and monitor are plugged into the battery backup portion of your UPS. The other equipment can be surge protected only and be fine. Items like the printer take too much power to run off the battery and should not be powered by the battery anyway. Remember, the battery is simply there to give you enough time to save your work and shut down properly (if the power does not come right back on of course). You need to power your computer and the screen to see what you’re doing. Everything else is not necessary and is only going to drag the battery down quicker than it should.

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