Yesterday’s tip had to do with which devices to plug into your battery-powered plugs on your UPS. I would like to issue an addendum to that.

On printers, ink jet printers draw very little power when not in use and therefore could be plugged into the battery backup with little harm. Laser printers, however, are a different story and do consume more power, so therefore they should not be set up on battery backup.

For broadband users, one can plug their modem into the battery backup in order to sustain the internet connection during an outage. Those on cable could still be out of luck if their service provider does not have its own backup power in the event of an outage, but DSL is based on the phone system and is therefore independent of the electrical system. Unless you lose phone service as well, you can stay up and running online by plugging your DSL modem into the battery.

Thanks to Luis for sending in this reminder.