Surge Protectors & Backup Batteries, appartment style Options

[eaks]

Hi dear fellow musicians, I thought this could be the right place to talk about:

surge protectors & backup batteries!

To which extent do you guys think its important to have some hi-tech protectors with batteries? Would you mind a casual, rare happening power failure? Can we take the risk not to have quality surge protectors?

I checked those APCs' fatties today and I'm wondering if they're noisy, having a home-studio brings gear in a kindred way...I dont want no troubles while miking with condensers such as the NT4!!! Otherwise I would go for something like that, with the USB connection ensuring secure computer shutdown in case of a power failure. The other thing is that it uses a usb port, which is already overcrowded. But in another hand, I would consider one APC (or else) that has multiple usb ports to shut down multiple computers.

So, what is your opinion on all that, considering an appartment with no possibilities of lone grounding? Any suggestions and experiences on various brands would be appreciated.

regards!

[cornutt]

now I'm considering 1 or two APCs' (i'd like to have all my comp automatically shutdown when needed) But I wonder if they're noisy... are they?

I've used some 800-1500 VA rack mount APCs in the past and they are very quiet. In fact, they hardly make any noise at all except when running on battery (when fans have to come on), and if you are actually on battery you aren't going to be too worried about a bit of noise at that point. It's very worthwhile to have a real UPS system for almost any computer these days, and that particularly goes for hard disk recording.