I don't understand the whole UPS thing. We had like one blackout in the past 10 years here. Even if I lost 5 minutes of work (I use ctrl+s a lot), it doesn't justify paying for some special device or switch to a laptop. Can someone explain the necessity of UPS?

it allows for safe power downs(and protects from surges too i believe, but a surge protector is good enough for this). i'm not sure why skytiger is so obsessed with them, fairly certain that's litterally been his entire argument. could a mod lock this thread? it's becoming a bit pathetic(mostly because skytiger keeps saying "UPS!!!!!", clearly he's gotten screwed in the past, and is out to ensure noone else meets a similar fate), and i no longer need help at this point(i do thank everyone that has pitched in thus far though).

For £100 you get a 250W UPS ... a powerful PC won't even boot on that

The UPS protects the PC from dirty power, not just power cuts

If anybody on the local substation uses a power tool, for example, your PC will be damaged

You know all those forum posts "my PC started acting weird" "after reinstalling windows it was OK" ...

Many times that will be caused by dirty power

The worst thing is when your data is corrupted, but you don't realise for months, and you have backups of corrupt data also

I learnt this the hard way, setup a new PC from scratch and the builders next door started a power tool ... machine started random BSODs

no way to know if permanent damage has occurred ... but I bought a UPS and reinstalled windows and all was well after that

If you use a PC to earn a living - you need a UPS

Skytiger, I think you're overstating the cost of a a UPS. I bought a 900w UPS for around $160 USD, and it runs my old desktop (900w PSU, Radeon 6990, 6 hard disks, OC'ed Core 2 Duo) and 30" LCD just fine for about 40 minutes in the case of a power outage -- not enough to continue on with my workday, but enough to finish up what I was doing and shut down nicely.

But I'll say again, Samoth, that your experiences are what I'd consider atypical. I've never experienced quite the disparity you say you've seen between a new (non atom) laptop and generations-old desktop. If anything, it probably isn't the hardware components, but the hardware configuration. I can imagine that a laptop with <= 4GB ram, combined with a low-power 4200rpm hard disk, and aggressive spin-down of the disk to save power might behave similar to the way you describe. My higher-end laptop, which I've got about $1600 USD into, is snappy as can be -- I've been choosy about the hardware, granted, but its hardly and expensive or exotic configuration. Again, I'm not saying you don't get more for a same-cost desktop, just that the performance picture you're painting is atypical.

Regarding the latest-gen atom argument, that's a bit of a misnomer and you can be forgiven for not understanding. All Atoms to date have the same internal architecture as the first Atoms. They've done a feature shrink and eaked out ~200 Mhz headroom at the high-end, but only the as-yet-unreleased next-gen atom actually changes the execution engine at all.

In the last 5 years, the only time my pc is shutdown, is when there's been a power cut. The only thing that broke in my computer was 2 video card, and it wasn't because of the power surge but because they where both fanless and i like to play games for an extended period of time. Although id like to get one (power cut was becoming anoying a couple of years ago), i dont see that as a "vital" component imo. As long as you have a good power bar to protect from power surges and brownouts, it should be enough.