Paranoid people and those who need near-100% uptime from their computers use Uninterruptible Power Supplies: external devices - batteries, really - that plug into the mains and provide plug points that look just like the ones in the wall. They convert AC power to DC (for the batteries) which is converted back to AC (when needed) and finally converted back to DC by the computer's power supply. Does anyone else see the problem there? To me, it makes absolute sense to build a battery into every computer's power supply, thereby cheaply, easily and efficiently ensuring that momentary power losses do not result in dead machines and lost work.
Mokalus of Borg
PS - A few enterprising companies do sell power supplies fitting this description.
PPS - But only a few.
3 comments:
In every computer? I think they're not doing it because they're more expensive and quite heavy. That is not a good combination for a LAN machine, especially if you don't need it.
It doesn't have to be a huge battery. Just enough to, say, keep the memory, disk and processor going long enough to hibernate.
Of course I appreciate that most people don't need it, and people who do need it generally have multiple servers to manage and will therefore have an external system for all of them.
All I'm advocating is a way to prevent Joe Clueless from losing his entire day's work just because he forgot to save and his curious two-year-old pulled the plug.
You're assuming that what Joe Clueless was doing was important.
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