Dead Moniter and Power Surge Protectors

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

Well my old CRT died this afternoon. First time ever I've killed one. It died young too. Only 26 months old.

So I now have a 17 inch LCD flat panel. Not a bad cost. $200 after manufacturer rebate.

Can I leave it on all the time or should I turn the monitor off at night? It does time out ( goes to sleep mode ) to a blank screen after about 5 or 10 minutes.

I had read that the LCD TVs will die if left on an exorbinant amount of time.

The geek at Best Buy also advised replacing the power surge protectors every 8 months or so. We do get a lot of surges here. He said to thing of them as rubber bands they only stretch so many times and then they aren't going to be able to handle the job.

Thanks for the help.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Well my old CRT died this afternoon. First time ever I've killed one. It died young too. Only 26 months old.

So I now have a 17 inch LCD flat panel. Not a bad cost. $200 after manufacturer rebate.

Can I leave it on all the time or should I turn the monitor off at night? It does time out ( goes to sleep mode ) to a blank screen after about 5 or 10 minutes.

I had read that the LCD TVs will die if left on an exorbinant amount of time.

The geek at Best Buy also advised replacing the power surge protectors every 8 months or so. We do get a lot of surges here. He said to thing of them as rubber bands they only stretch so many times and then they aren't going to be able to handle the job.

Thanks for the help.

I have heard talk about what is better leaving it on or leaving it off before. Leaving it on with a screen saver is good or if it goes into sleep mode which is also good. Turning a LCD screen on and off puts more strain on it than if it was left on. The intial start is with kills it. We all leave them on in my house and no problems. In fact my sons old LCD 4-5 years old)has now been handed down to my wifes as her old CRT died after 5 years. I may buy her a new one since she only now has a 15 inch. I have seen deals for 19 inch lcds for $230.

As far as replacing the surge protecter. Tell that guy not to say something that he knows nothing about. Thats hog wash what he told you. IMO he is trying to sell you more at a latter date. What is inside a surge protecer is a breaker and breaker's do not stretch.

[tonyg Goomba & Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close tonyg]

Wow, what brand is that ? Did his great grandpa leave it to him ?

... In fact my sons old LCD94years old)has now been handed down to my wifes as her old CRT died after 5 years....

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

Surge protectors with batteries only last that long so check when the warranty runs out. We bought two of them at the same time and both gave up the ghost at the same time two days apart. One turned off my Mac, monitor and notebook while I was online and the other one went out when the computer was off. It would not turn on until we had removed it from the surge protector. Both had batteries that must have died after so long. They may have been three years old or a little older as we bought them when we had the brown-outs in California whenever that was.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Wow, what brand is that ? Did his great grandpa leave it to him ?

Tony, I was just making sure that you were reading the posts. Good Job

Emmy, Don't buy the ones with the batteries. The plain type work better and last longer.

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

Frank, California had so many brown-outs that we needed these battery type surge protectors. We may have brown-outs again this summer. We are so far in debt!!!

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Frank, California had so many brown-outs that we needed these battery type surge protectors. We may have brown-outs again this summer. We are so far in debt!!!

Emmy Lawren is on the East coast. Are you sure you are not confusing Surge protecter with a back up power supply? Let me ask you, How much does your surge protecter cost? Is it around $50 to $90?

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

The ones with batteries are UPS's (uninteruptable power supplies), they are made to hold the power over during a brief outage, or to give you enough time to do a planned power down when electricity goes out. Many of them do have surge protectors built in.
As far as replacing surge protectors, the Best Buy geek was wrong, as far as a specific timeframe for replacement, but, they do go bad. The reason they go bad is that, they don't really work as a circuit breaker. Inside they have a thing called a MOV (metal oxide varistor) attached to the lines coming to the outlets. What this device does is when it senses a surge of a certain value it shunts off the excess electricity flow to ground until the surge is over.
The best thing to do is to buy a surge protector that has an led light to show if it is still protecting. If the MOV's burn out which they sometimes do in a surge the light will no longer show. The power strip will still work as a power strip but no surge protection will take place.
One other thing is to make sure that any surge protector you buy is UL listed.
For a UL listed one you will see the voltage that it shunts power off at and this should be a 330V or 400V level (anything greater than 400 is not giving you much protection). Also it list the energy absorbtion, and this should be at least 200-300 joules, the higher the better.
Anyway, that is todays lesson on surge protectors, sorry to sound geeky and boring, but, you need to be a bit careful when buying these because there is a lot of cheap crap out there that doesn't protect your equipment much.

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

surge protectors built in.
As far as replacing surge protectors, the Best Buy geek was wrong, as far as a specific timeframe for replacement, but, they do go bad. The reason they go bad is that, they don't really work as a circuit breaker. Inside they have a thing called a MOV (metal oxide varistor) attached to the lines coming to the outlets. What this device does is when it senses a surge of a certain value it shunts off the excess electricity flow to ground until the surge is over.
The best thing to do is to buy a surge protector that has an led light to show if it is still protecting. If the MOV's burn out which they sometimes do in a surge the light will no longer show. The power strip will still work as a power strip but no surge protection will take place.
One other thing is to make sure that any surge protector you buy is UL listed.
For a UL listed one you will see the voltage that it shunts power off at and this should be a 330V or 400V level (anything greater than 400 is not giving you much protection). Also it list the energy absorbtion, and this should be at least 200-300 joules, the higher the better.

Not boring in the least! A tad geeky though.

Actually that was the explanation I was looking for. I have a Belkin surgemaster and the LED is lit underneath "protected". I bought it particularly for the computer equipment and modems. I will keep an eye on that! Replacing a monitor isn't OK but certainly is the least costly piece.

A question though the LED under "grounded" is not lit. Is that a problem? Or is it because it is plugged in through an adapter because I don't have a 3 prong outlet up here?

and Thanks Frank! I will leave it on as per usual.

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

A question though the LED under "grounded" is not lit. Is that a problem? Or is it because it is plugged in through an adapter because I don't have a 3 prong outlet up here?

and Thanks Frank! I will leave it on as per usual.

Yes, the grounded LED being off is probably because you aren't using a 3 prong plug and therefore there is no ground. This could cause the surge protector to not work correctly because when there is a surge the device moves the excess voltage to ground to get rid of it. I'm not sure what happens if the ground part of the circuit doesn't go all the way to ground.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

The ones with batteries are UPS's (uninteruptable power supplies), they are made to hold the power over during a brief outage, or to give you enough time to do a planned power down when electricity goes out. Many of them do have surge protectors built in.
As far as replacing surge protectors, the Best Buy geek was wrong, as far as a specific timeframe for replacement, but, they do go bad. The reason they go bad is that, they don't really work as a circuit breaker. Inside they have a thing called a MOV (metal oxide varistor) attached to the lines coming to the outlets. What this device does is when it senses a surge of a certain value it shunts off the excess electricity flow to ground until the surge is over.
The best thing to do is to buy a surge protector that has an led light to show if it is still protecting. If the MOV's burn out which they sometimes do in a surge the light will no longer show. The power strip will still work as a power strip but no surge protection will take place.
One other thing is to make sure that any surge protector you buy is UL listed.
For a UL listed one you will see the voltage that it shunts power off at and this should be a 330V or 400V level (anything greater than 400 is not giving you much protection). Also it list the energy absorbtion, and this should be at least 200-300 joules, the higher the better.
Anyway, that is todays lesson on surge protectors, sorry to sound geeky and boring, but, you need to be a bit careful when buying these because there is a lot of cheap crap out there that doesn't protect your equipment much.

Ken if you know what a MOV is then I take it you went to electrontis school as I did. I used circuit breaker in my post because I felt it would be easy for them to understand. BTW they do make the surge protecter with a real circuit breaker. I know this as I have one. The less expensive modles use MOV's.
You can also buy an MOV at radio shake in fact I have a few some place laying around that I took from my job. You can just plug it into the closest outlet. Don't do this at home because if it blows when you reach a 130 volt spike it will pop and there will be a spark that can cause a fire. It will also stink out your house.

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

Hi Frank,
Yes you are right, some of them do have a circuit breaker also, which adds a bit more protection.
No, for me not electronics school, but, was in charge of computer support and then networking server support at a large organization, about 7000 PC's statewide.
Take care.

[WanderLust Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close WanderLust]

I have decided to use UPS rather than surge protector. I have 8 outlets on the UPS all with surge protection. Conducted a deep battery test and my pc operated for 55 minutes on battery power alone. At 55 minutes, I still had 23% battery strength. Test canceled automatically.

There are so many brown outs in our area. Power goes out for second or two and comes back on, that surge protection couldn't handle it.

Haven't had a problem since using the UPS.

[Timesharetalk Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Timesharetalk]

If there is no ground, the potential has nowhere to go and will either turn into back-EMF and cause something to go 'pop' or it will destroy the surge protector.

Also, and this is by far the most important fact, if you have no ground continuity, your run the risk of electrocution should any of your equipment fail.