Properly Protecting Your Computer System: Surge Protector vs. UPS
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I was mostly being facetious bringing the idea up, but I can think of a couple of limited applications where it would actually make sense: the first one being if you were running on, say, solar power, and using, say, a laptop, getting 12VDC from the battery bank without running it through an inverter and then back through the laptop's power supply would probably be a good thing.
Also, anywhere like server farms, like I mentioned above, where you'd have so many machines the electricity loss would actually be noticeable.
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I'm not actually going to say that's a bad idea, but it'll take 5 years for widespread adoption
People who want UPSs could start buying power supplies with a connector for an internal battery (like a freaking laptop! It's not exactly new technology) as soon as they are in the market. Then they would hopefully slowly gain some adoption. It's not something you need everyone to support before you can use it.
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Also, anywhere like server farms, like I mentioned above
It works great on server farms because you can have a central planner buying hardware that only uses one voltage internally. The idea is a total non-starter for consumers precisely because you can't get vendors of low cost hardware to agree on anything. Interoperability is an avenue for customer escape from lock-in. If any vendor actually attempted this, the first decision would be to patent the connector shape and/or to put some sort of authentication protocol on the wire. See: everything Apple has ever done.
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Your electrical system really is screwed in the US
I'll put our poorest State up against the EU's poorest member country on power reliability ANY DAY OF THE WEEK. COME AT US, BRO!
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The 5V rail is usually 25 amps or more. You don't just slap a switching regulator on a load like that.
Ever heard of a buck converter? AC is not necessary to step up or down voltages. You can do it with PWM and achieve very high efficiencies and very low thermal losses.
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It works great on server farms because you can have a central planner buying hardware that only uses one voltage internally. The idea is a total non-starter for consumers precisely because you can't get vendors of low cost hardware to agree on anything.
Even in the case of the open compute platform that is run almost entirely from 12v DC feeds, they still transform voltages on the board. None of this you talk about is even necessary.
Not that there is a need for it in the consumer space. We are all basically talking out our asses right now.
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I'm running without any surge or outage protection at all. Only high-voltage long-distance lines are above ground here, so the only outages we tend get are shorts in transformer stations.
We had a several-hour outage earlier this year when a major transformer station went out. I only recall one multi-day outage in The Netherlands in the last decade, and that was from an apache helicopter running into a high-voltage line.
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Of course they do. No x86/64 chip has a core voltage anywhere near 12VDC.
Logic is usually 1.8V, 2.5V or 3.3V, with 5V for USB and similar.12V is used because it's the highest voltage present on a normal motherboard, thus it's trivial to add the 5V and 3.3V lines from cheap buck convertors. (Or even linear LDO regulators if you care about cost more than efficiency)
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You and I are saying the same thing. My comment was about @Jaime talking out his ass on how if you fed a computer with 12v DC you would have to convert it back to AC to transform it to the various voltages a computer uses.
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Here in Belgium there have been major discussions about possible power outages in case of severe winter conditions over multiple days across Belgium and Western Europe (because that would mean import would be limited).
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... which was actually a scare tactic of the former-official-monopoly-on-energy company to get legislation passed so its nuclear power plants won't be decommissioned any time soon.
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Probably homebuilt with shitty Linux Hardware
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In spite of microfractures? Or was that later?
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The Post Office works better for me.
How good a job do they do of keeping your power on in an outage?
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EU's poorest member country on power reliability
Pfffffbt, they can't even keep ATMs working, let alone power plants.
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Easy: if his power's out he can just go to the post office and use theirs.
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use theirs.
I would like to see him try that. (Yeah, his post office probably isn't a pile of
and fail like the American system.
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Yeah, his post office probably isn't a pile of
and fail like the American system.Wrong. It's a privatised pile of
and fail.
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So is ours, claim the people who don't want to admit it's another bit of Federal incompetence.
But I was going along with the idea that it might actually be possible in your country.
I don't think I've ever seen a PO worker--that is, someone who works in an office, as opposed to a mail carrier--who wasn't a total jobsworth, although I suppose they must exist.
Lots of the carriers are useless, too. We had one at my apartment complex who would sometimes park in a handicapped spot.
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Lots of the carriers are useless, too. We had one at my apartment complex who would sometimes park in a handicapped spot.
Eh, I suppose it depends on whether he has good judgment. I've seen lots of parking lots where all the regular spaces are taken, but there's 4 or 5 vacant handicapped spots. Mailmen are only going to be parked in one spot for a few minutes anyway.
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The time (times? I can't remember if it happened more than once that I saw) I saw it, there were other spots available.
