Originally posted by: Amanda85
What are the general disadvantages of UPSs?
There are hardly any disadvantages.
The battery dies after a few years. So, you will need to replace the battery or buy a new one.
Some of them make some noise (hum)! You may hear it if you are very sensitive to noise and have a very quiet environment.
Are they easy to hook up?
It depends what is easy for you.
For some, you have to open the battery compartment, hook up the battery and put it back together again.
The power network in my area is pretty unreliable; power outages, voltage spikes etc. are frequent. I have important data and no RAID/backup
If you are saying you do not backup your data, that is what you have to worry about before worrying about getting a UPS.
I want to minimize chances of hard disk failure through voltage spikes etc. and I intend to get one of those. What do I need to look for? Any general advice/recommendation?
In the US, APC is very well respected and many companies use them exclusively.
I have good experience with them too.
You need to figure out the power your PC and monitor consume. If you have a typical PC, it is about 200W.
Based on that, get a stand-by UPS that can offer twice the power you need.
You are going to receive advice to get one with Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) or one that provides power conditioning, or one that is not stand-by ......
These are all good capabilities. But, for a typical home PC, none of those is necessary.
You can use this web site to get some recommendations.
http://apc.com/tools/ups_selector/index.cfm