Why you should invest in an uninterruptible power supply

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Don't fear mains failure

Other influencing factors

Other than the underlying UPS technology, the main factors influencing your choice of product will be power output and back-up time.

Do bear in mind, though, that only a huge UPS will be able to power your equipment for more than a few minutes from the battery. In reality, you'll probably only use it to save any files that were open and shut down Windows.

You're unlikely to need a UPS that will power your printer, scanner and so on as well. The back-up time is a measure of how long equipment will run on battery power.

This depends on how much power you're drawing from the UPS, so don't take notice of claims that a UPS provides 'up to' a certain time.

Instead, look for the time at full load. For some supplies, this figure may be fairly short – one of the products reviewed here provides just two and a half minutes at full load.

There are a few other things to look out for. Many UPSes feature additional sockets to provide surge and spike protection with no battery backup. These could be used to provide protection for a printer, for example. It's also common to find surge and spike protection for data lines entering the PC.

Of most importance is the telephone line, although some products can also protect a network connection. It's hard to get excited about a piece of equipment that normally sits in the background doing nothing, but the benefits are clear.

If you do lose data because of a problem with the mains, you'll be kicking yourself.