Slashdot Mirror

Hello,

Inline 100-240V laptop surge suppressors are readily available from online electronics retailers. Here are a few that will work for you:

• APC - APC Notebook Surge Protector for AC, phone and network lines, 3 pin connection, 100-240V
• CyberPower - CyberPower CPS500NBP Notebook Surge Suppressor - 500 Joules 2&3 Prong RJ11/RJ45 EMI/RFI
• Lindy - Laptop Surge Protector with USB Charger, Cloverleaf
• Tripp-Lite - Protect It! 2-Connector (C6, 3-Prong) In-Line Surge Protector, 306 Joules, Tel/Ethernet Protection

I've used the APC model without any issues, as well as models from Targus and TRC that has since been discontinued, but occasionally show up online for sale.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

I would think using something APC ProtectNet would protect against this and EtherKiller.

http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=145&ISOCountryCode=us

If it's a straight cable it's probably a communications cable for a UPS. (really just USB at both ends)

If it has a box in the middle it's most likeley a USB-to-serial cable to connect to a switch, like this one.

Doesn't check it works perfectly on all hardware, but a good chunk of the testing could be done on VMs running monkey-scripts which are simply disposed of & a new image spun up if they break. That said, automating hardware resets is hardly an unsolved problem.

Using the APC UTS I'm "only" able to protect 10 circuits (8x110V, 2x220V) in my house but it is great for my needs (allows for both gas generator and APC battery backup power sources). The APC UTS acts as a bridge between the main power rails in your main panel and the wires to each room. Both my living room and office are designated as "uninterruptible" for Tivos, computers, etc. Each of the 10 circuits has a highly sensitive "200ka IR 600V AC" fuse (both 15A and 20A are supported) for outstanding surge protection.

Protecting against surges (Transients) and Lightning strikes are 2 very different things. I have worked in some of the nicest tier IV data centers with state of the art redundant power systems and protection. Most Tier IV data centers will have a "Lightning Detection" system. They will count on their power systems and grounding to help, but still track area lightning strikes and be on alert to check things should lightning hit them or close to them. The reason is because there is not gaurantee's when it comes to lightning. That much energy can jump gaps in blown breakers, fuses, and circuits and cause all sorts of havoc, even if the Generator and UPS is still up. Now, transient surge suppression is a different issue and not too expensive for whole home systems IMO. It is not a guarantee, but it is better than nothing at all. http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=174 (this is link to APC residential hard wire panel mount surge suppression options at list cost). Couple a home solution like the APC units above that protects all the random outlets in your house, with strategically placed UPS systems (behind entertainment center, in the office, etc.) and you are getting a decent ammount of protection from the normal surges and near strikes. In closing, lightning is a odd thing. I have been in a house and care that where "stuck". In the car, almost everything was fine, radio lost its pre-sets and time, etc. but that was about it. I don't remember even having any fuses go out. In the house, some things where fried, others where fine. For example, my roommates TV was toast, but the main one in the living room was OK, neither where on UPS. The cordless phone was fine, but the speakers in the corded handset where toast and would only squeal when you turned on the phone.

You can also maybe take a look at the APC netshelter cx range...

That sounds a little dodgy. APC introduced its first UPS in 1984 (from http://www.apc.com/corporate/history.cfm ). I think data centers were kept at lower temperatures well before 1984. I think it's more likely that APC specified a given volt-amp performance at 65 degrees because that's the temperature data centers were usually kept at anyway.

I have a few of these APC SurgeArrest to protect my equipment at home, and they are supposed to protect against lightning. They even offer a "Equipment Protection Policy guarantee" where they are supposed to compensate for any hardware destroyed by a surge, even though I haven't read the fine print on that one...

http://www.apc.com/

Seriously. If your server is a big enough target where to have it's keys taken using this technique is beneficial (a key signing server for example) then you need a bit more protection against somebody hanging outside on a pole playing with your electricity supply.

Going DC doesn't save as much as you might think

There was an apc paper (search for DC on http://www.apc.com/prod_docs/results.cfm?DocType=White%20Paper&Query_Type=10 to find it) on this not long ago.

They considered five systems, three existing and two hypothetical and looked at the total efficiancy including UPS, distribution and PSU in equipment (remember even with DC distribution you still need a PSU and generally said PSU needs to be isolating).

* american AC: 480V/277V three phase from the UPS converted to 208V/120V three phase by transformers in the PDU and then split out to 120V single phase to feed into the PSU. Overall efficiancy 83.56%
* european AC: 400/230 three phase from the UPS split out into 230V single phase to feed into the PSU. Overall efficiancy 86.39%
* telco DC: 48V DC from UPS straight to the PSU. overall efficiancy 84.58%
* hypothetical 380V DC: 380V DC from UPS straight to the PSU 87.64%
* hypothetical hybrid DC: 575V DC from UPS to an intermediate converter which converts it to 48V to feed to the PSUs 80.74%

The hypothetical 380V DC system wins but not by much and it is likely to be FAR FAR more expensive to deploy than the european AC system.

THIS. I was going to post the same thing, but you beat me to it! APC makes exactly what you're talking about. They call it "InfraStruXure." Yeah, I know... Anywho, here's a link to their page for this stuff.

I concede that i was incorrect to place the blame on the brownouts specifically. I should have said home PC hardware failures are caused mostly by electrical problems.. I mention the brownouts because that is something visible (as opposed to the spikes.)

And getting a cheap UPS solved the problem. Specifically I got an , which was around $50.

If you spend $500 to $5000 on a computer (or other electronics), it is a good investment to protect it with a $50 UPS.

An auto switching power Y-cable with two inputs, and one output? ive never seen or heard of these.. Do you have a manufacturer or part number?
id defiantly like some.

Well, it ain't just a Y cable and they're not super-cheap, but still affordable if you're running anything that needs anywhere near the level of redundancy that they provide.

It's called a static transfer switch and can be had for a few hundred bucks from most APC dealers (and MGE dealers, now that the merger is complete).

What's nice about them is that unlike a UPS, colo providers don't mind if you stick an STS in your rack, as a UPS removes the colo provider's ability to completely shut off everything in the datacenter with their automated power systems if the shit really hits the fan (trust me, if there's a fire in the datacenter, you'd much rather have your servers suffer a cold shutdown than sucking in smoke and FM200 and all the other tasty stuff in the air, not to mention fanning or even directly contributing to an electrical fire if it's in your rack). An STS still enables them to completely kill the juice in an emergency while providing good & economic redundancy for single-feed machines, not to mention being close to 100% efficient.

There are solutions which meet the OP's demand, depending upon what size or scale solution he wants.

Large scale: APC makes their InfraStruXure products which can be equipped with additional hardware to deal with humidity, include UPSes, and often AC. Racks are included as well.

http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=258
http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=259

Sun's "Project Blackbox", which is a portable datacenter accomplishing the same thing -- but this is much larger.

http://www.sun.com/products/sunmd/s20/

Smaller scale:

Try the ClimateCab from Black Box, which is just a rack:

http://www.blackbox.com/Store/Detail.aspx/ClimateCab-NEMA-12-Data-Cabinet-with-12-24-Rails/RM5010A ...but with their AC/dehumidifier unit attached, you should be able to achieve what you want:

http://www.blackbox.com/Store/Detail.aspx/ClimateCab-NEMA-12-Wallmount-Cabinet-with-Air-Conditioning-Beige-Single-Hinged/RMW5130AC

Finally, consider contacting some of these companies directly! Seriously. Many of them can make custom solutions for you which could meet your needs.

But good luck doing any of this "without breaking the bank". If money is a huge concern, co-locate your boxes somewhere proper. I'm serious: do it right.

There are solutions which meet the OP's demand, depending upon what size or scale solution he wants.

Large scale: APC makes their InfraStruXure products which can be equipped with additional hardware to deal with humidity, include UPSes, and often AC. Racks are included as well.

http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=258
http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=259

Sun's "Project Blackbox", which is a portable datacenter accomplishing the same thing -- but this is much larger.

http://www.sun.com/products/sunmd/s20/

Smaller scale:

Try the ClimateCab from Black Box, which is just a rack:

http://www.blackbox.com/Store/Detail.aspx/ClimateCab-NEMA-12-Data-Cabinet-with-12-24-Rails/RM5010A ...but with their AC/dehumidifier unit attached, you should be able to achieve what you want:

http://www.blackbox.com/Store/Detail.aspx/ClimateCab-NEMA-12-Wallmount-Cabinet-with-Air-Conditioning-Beige-Single-Hinged/RMW5130AC

Finally, consider contacting some of these companies directly! Seriously. Many of them can make custom solutions for you which could meet your needs.

But good luck doing any of this "without breaking the bank". If money is a huge concern, co-locate your boxes somewhere proper. I'm serious: do it right.

Arguably, APC has become a mainframe vendor. They sell rack systems with integrated power, cooling, and cable management. Add commodity motherboards, CPU parts, disk drives, and software, and you have a mainframe. It's not that different from what HP or SGI or IBM or Sun will sell you. Especially since the "mainframe" vendors have mostly moved to commodity CPU parts.

I've pointed out before that computing is becoming more like stationary engineering. Stationary engineers run and maintain all the equipment in building basements and penthouses. With containerized data centers, computing looks more and more like that.

I was a treo user for 4 years prior to getting my iphone about a month ago.

Not being able to swap out the battery for a fresh one was something that bothered me, especially once I started using the iphone and seeing that there are tons of great apps and practically endless uses for the damn thing.

I researched it and ended up buying a device that is slightly smaller (thinner) than a deck of cards made by APC (the UPB10) - it's an external battery charger - you charge it up and keep it with you. When your iphone (or PSP, other cellphone, or other electronic device) needs to be recharged you just plug it into the usb port on this thing and press the button. You can do passthrough charging, so that you are charging both the APC and the iphone at the same time too; http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=UPB10%20

It can completely charge my iphone 3g from dead to fully charged twice before I need to recharge it. It's smart and will turn off once it charges the phone completely. It also serves as a power source so you can use your phone while it is charging.

I got mine at Amazon for $60 and am very happy with the purchase.

From an environmental standpoint I am assuming all of these batteries can be recycled. From a privacy standpoint it would be nice to be able to remove the battery.

APC Universal battery extender. 80Wh for around $150 US. There are others that sell these too.

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=UPB80&tab=features

Or just carry a second charged battery if you can afford a cold boot.

My MacBook Pro gets around 3 hours of web surfing on battery.

OK, here's a way to approach the problem.

APC sells racks with integrated cooling. They have an online configurator program. Run the configurator, fill in your info, and you'll get a rack design.

Try changing the "watts per rack" number. Watch what happens as the configurator adds air conditioning units and fans. Note that as the power density goes up, the cost goes way up.

This is where they start to ask questions like "Do we really need a Web 2.0 web site?" Now you're starting to get the picture.

I'm not partticularly recommending APC. They just happen to have a useful online tool, one which can give you something to take to your bosses to give them a sense of the costs as you add more equipment to a rack.

A small ups are more likely to absorb a couple hunderd joules (check it that is a factor 10...). YOu find out the difference when the computer blows out smoke to protect the fuse from blowing out.

There must be at least 50% loss in this. AC was designed for transmission lines, which run for miles.

While true that AC is very efficient for use in transmission (mostly due to the simplicity of stepping up the voltage as well as smaller line losses) the losses he would be experiencing are probably closer to ~10%. Modern computer power supplies and inverters run somewhere around 90-98% efficient. Also a run of DC in "meters" could cause significant voltage drop if the conductor was not seriously over-sized for the current. As long as there is any sort of real distance to be covered and bus bar systems are not being considered, inversion from DC and then later conversion does not cause the kinds of losses you are alluding too.

The simple example of the system employed here is the battery backed UPS next to your tower. The enterprise grade UPS here shows a system efficiency at full load of ~93%. This gives us the efficiency of a system that is AC->DC -> DC->AC and by simply rearranging the order of the modules we will get the DC->AC -> AC->DC. While this does not include the actual modules used in the system it does show the current order of efficiency that this system can be operating at.

In the article it was also stated that the panels were only producing at 90.16% of rated which is overall damn good considering a panel rating of +/- 5% and the variability of nature. Additional considerations should also be taken in the non-standard voltage produced (41 VDC) in the panels which must be either boosted to 48 VDC or bucked to 12 or 24 and regulated for use as a stable DC supply.

Overall the losses in conversion can pale against line losses through a DC system the size of a house including the regulation that would either need to occur on the entire system or more practically at every device.

My wife is huge into low-energy tools, and she got us a kill-a-watt to play with.

In my server racks, I've got the PDU equivalent of this from APC. They've helped me many times in load balancing the power draw across our circuits

You mean like this:

http://www.apc.com/products/infrastruxure/index.cfm

Third party companies sell external batteries for laptops too.
e.g. http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=358

What a pointless rant. In my experience, save points are on average about 15-20 minutes apart. Any less than that and you can pretty much say goodbye to any hope of creating immersion in a game. If you can't sit down for more than 20 minutes at a time to play a game then you sir either have a thriving social life (unlikely considering the nature and passion of your post about video games) or an incredibly short attention span. Why not go play some Brain Age instead? Or bite the bullet and shuck that 15 minutes of gameplay you just went through? Would it kill you? Some of us like to experience our games in proper chapters and don't need to jump in and out at the drop of a hat.

Save points aren't just there to screw with you. They provide the story with pacing and ensure all that time they spent building up some aspect of the gameplay isn't wasted by a temporal discontinuity that is completely out of their control. If you're playing a game that can just be jumped in and out of, odds are it isn't very deep anyway.

And if power outages are really that much of a concern for you, there are myriad solutions at hand.

For the record, cell service just came back up... well, actually it didn't ...it now says 'network busy'. Probably a puny mobile cell site trailer... have to go look for it in the morning.
Speaking of which, I have been looking around but I still don't see that Aussie-accented-guy standing in any ponds or holes around here touting the new 'AT&T Wireless Broadband Network'...

Sure, what else to do after an Ice storm (after getting your power working).. but Post on /.
I have remarkably reliable Cable Internet/Digital Cable service and it is *always* working.
My Cable provider's nodes have UPS battery boxes w/Natural Gas generators attached to each fiber/analog node breakout box (sitting beside it).
One of these nodes happens to be located 30 feet from my house in my yard's edge. (I know this because I lifted off its plastic cover to see what the hell I have been mowing around...) I truly enjoy the low latency (LPB) of having my cable provider's fiber-to-coax node so close to my home. (And the DOCSIS loop sharing, etc.. is not an issue (yet) in my neighborhood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS)
And yes, I have a decent 5kw generator and several UPS' of my own doing frequent 'line conditioning' operations on the sags and spikes of the generator's voltage regulators being slow. Extension cords abound. (Apparently some ice covered trees took out the feed lines going to the sub-station (which is one block away).. according to my power utility provider. That will probably take days to fix... Crews have been called in from other states to 'help'...
Let's just say that I now know where that extra money went when I purchased one of these... http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=SUA1000XL
It may only be 1000VA, but it has a monster battery and is very responsive to line conditions (plus has lots of indicator lights on the front that finally I get to see in action)... -Z

Since I process lots of data, screen space is needed. Since that data is also collected onto a laptop first, even more so.
So I have a KDE Desktop, running synergy 19" LCD (biggest that fits under the hutch) Next to this I have a separate file cabinet that has 21" CRT monitor, and a laptop stand (similar to http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=265)
this pushes the laptop screen up to the same height as the top of the other monitors, and more importantly gets it closer to me, since the keyboard is vertical now.

with synergy (IE my desktop keyboard and mouse) now running the laptop, the Laptop keyboard/pad isn't needed. With synergy going over the network connection, their is nothing to plug-in, wifi picks up the keyboard/mouse for me (I usually plugin a network cable, and power because I get ~500MB files to transfer) I plug in the monitor to the laptop, and do the extended desktop when producing reports.

now I built my own laptop cradle. Because I test vehicles with metal dashes, I have a magnet that snaps to the dash of our vehicles, it also attaches it's self to my desk. I made swing down legs with the magnet attached, so it is a additional protective cage when in my bag, etc. and adds only 1/4" to the Laptop size.

I have to wonder how it compares to this, both in price and in capabilities. (see the 'more images' link for pics of the inside).

I don't know who came up with the idea first.

APC makes a Fuel Cell generator for the data center. 10 kW in a medium-sized suitcase, if i understand correctly. It'll eat a six foot tall can of hydrogen an hour, though, so you'll need a pretty big tank.

http://apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=47
http://apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=4

http://apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=47
http://apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=4

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index .cfm?base_sku=ISXT440MD12RMBL APC beat both Google and Sun to market on this one. This is one of the 'coolest' ideas I've ever seen. Park this in a lot and have a replacement datacenter on demand, or drive it around the country like the Russians used to do with the nukes.

If you want a bit more than a home-grade AC, and more flexible, try this from APC: http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index .cfm?base_sku=ACF301&tab=features It is designed for wall or ceiling mount.

That some hacker will start getting free gas when he uses the techniques used to fool cheap biometric security devices you can get for your PC (like this one)

I'm suprised that this took so long to be implemented, seeing as it is not a very complex setup (heck, I could make one)

One actually useful technology I ran across recently is fuel cells that fit in a rack:

http://apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm ?base_sku=ISX-FCXR10-30

Looks like it can actually generate 10Kw and could have a several day runtime capability. The web site is unfortunatly short on details, but I'm sure some intrepid /. readers can dig them up.

I bet they cost an arm and a leg, or maybe two legs. Has anyone out there ever seen/used one of these units?

There are several approaches to power distribution. One is "telco type" -48VDC distribution. This is most appropriate when the configuration doesn't change much. Wiring usually involves big cables and screw lugs. Plugs aren't standardized. More importantly, there's no set of simple rules, like the UL/NEMA/NEC standards that govern plugs, outlets, wiring, and circuit breakers, that make 120V power distribution safe without having to measure everything.

In the 120VAC world, everything has been designed so that end users don't have to worry much about overloading the wiring. If they do, a circuit breaker will trip. An ordinary power plug, a "5-15P", can handle 15A, so if you have an outlet strip, there is a breaker to protect the plug and cord from overload, should the total load on the power strip exceed 15A. A 20A power strip must have a "L5-20P" plug, the big twist-lock type. As soon as you get away from 120VAC, you lose that designed-in idiot-proofing. (Europe is still struggling in this area, with too many different connectors, so you don't get the same level of idiot-proofing in the 220VAC part of the world.) So once you leave 120VAC, you're going to need power engineering skills. (Clamp-around ammeters are very useful, and yes, you can get them for DC.)

There's also 400Hz AC distribution, which allows for smaller transformers and filter caps in power supplies. 400Hz rackmount servers are available. Aircraft, military, and some mainframe systems use 400Hz. It's not a big win in this era of switching power supplies.

There's 3-phase power distribution. Here's a 3-phase outlet strip. More to the point, there's an efficiency gain in running a UPS from 3-phase power, and big UPSs are usually 3-phase, at least on the input side. Arguably, power should be 3-phase down to the point where it's rectified to DC, because 3-phase rectifiers need far less filtering, but nobody does this for small loads.

American Power Conversion has been pushing the idea of integrating power conversion, cable management, and cooling into standard racks. Classically, those are the big problems in big computer systems. Seymour Cray used to say that the big problems were "the thickness of the (wiring) mat" and "getting rid of the heat". By that standard, APC is now as much of a computer manufacturer as, say, Dell; neither makes motherboards or ICs, they just package gear from others. Which is a wierd thought.

All of this power is going to be converted again, at least once, and probably twice, before it hits the semiconductors. That's the job of point-of-load DC to DC converters, usually ICs on the board that do the final conversion. Typically, when you get to the computer, there's a conversion from the line voltage (120-240VAC, 48VDC, etc) to internal distribution voltages of 5-12VDC, then another conversion and regulation just before each device, usually downward to something like 3.3VDC. This keeps transient load changes from one device from affecting others. There may be on-chip regulation, too. The losses at those last stages of conversion are usually the biggest ones in the whole chain.

While I can't say I've tried this, it certainly looks interesting:
APC TravelPower Cases

Basically a bag to carry your electronics that has an integrated power system to charge all your electronics - just plug in the whole bag and everything gets charged.

The square footage of the space has almost nothing to do with the size of the cooling unit you need. You need to base it on the wattage of the equipment you're going to put in there instead. Divide the wattage of your equipment by three to get an approximation of the BTUs per hour rating you'll need on your AC unit. Regardless, the laws of thermodynamics require that you will have to cut a vent hole for the heat to exit through even if you're using an air conditioner. As long as you're going to have a vent hole anyway, why not cut two? Put a big slow quiet fan in the top one blowing in, and an air filter in the bottom (or the other way around)?

If you insist on AC, you probably want something like this: APC NetworkAIR AP7003 or more likely, some other (cheaper, but similar) portable AC unit with an exhaust hose from your local Wal-Mart.

I have a work-provided Dell D600 from last year. Sticker on the case says it has a Pentium M. It runs at 1.4GHz. Trust me, it fries my lap. Even with the CPU in adaptive speed mode it's unbearably hot unless it's the dead of winter. I shouldn't have to buy an Ergonomic Mobile Cooling Platformto insulate my nuts from a *lap*top. Just sitting here reading and posting to slashdot, the CPU is at a leisurely 37, but the GPU is at 42, the DIMMs at 47 (you can feel an obvious hot-spot at the memory access panel) and the HDD is sitting at 51 (! noticably warming my left hand).

I could live with it in a desktop probably though.

APC makes some environmental monitoring units. Here's a list of them from their site:

http://apc.com/products/category.cfm?id=7&subid=29

They monitor temp and humidity among other things and include customisable relays, threasholds, remote access, and email monitoring.

I use an internal APC environmental monitoring card, which costs about $150. There is an external version for about $250 USD. http://www.apc.com/products/category.cfm?id=7&subi d=29

I am using the internal card in an APC MasterSwitch, which allows me to control the power, and SNMP/web monitor the temperature (and create MRTG graphs). I also have a script which watches the temp and pages me at x degrees.

APC makes an inexpensive but very effective monitoring device:

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index .cfm?base_sku=AP9319

I have installed these at multiple sites with great sucess. They do email or SNMP notifications and are manageable through a web interface.

Why reinvent the wheel? --kash

APC is also American Power Conversion who makes Uninterruptable Power Supplies, UPS's.

...which would be similar to referring to a box of tissues as a box of Kleenex?

APC Professional SurgeArrest. Depending on how many transformer outlets you need, it's halfway there.

One controller vendor has released a new firmware update, required for all users of battery backed up cache. Anyone with a 3-Ware SATA controller and battery backup should get their latest firmware. Wikipedia has two of these controllers.

A SCSI controller vendor didn't turn of hard drive write caching (!!) and didn't provide any way to get through the controller to do it, has released a utility to let you turn off the hard drive write cache on some models, with more to come. Not turning off drive caches made the battery almost completely useless. Wikipedia has three of these controllers.

A phone call to a drive vendor pre-sales support said that their 400GB SATA drives would still cache writes if told not to cache writes. When I pointed out that this effectively guaranteed data loss the support person checked then transferred me to their labs, which said that yes,the drive really would respect the cache off setting, so it actually is safe. Glad they got it right in the end (I hope - but I'll still be testing!).

Not related: Apple was found to ignore fsync flushes, caching instead. MySQL now has a workaround for that. And some FC3 versions apparently don't properly respect fsyncs either.

MySQL, recognising the sad reality of the OS and hardware layers, is doing something more about it (beyond write-ahead logging, doublewrite and page checksums), judging by blogs and their public responses to my public comments on this.

I'm distinctly unimpressed by the below the database layers and their respect for what's needed to have reliable storage. If you're serious about reliability, don't even think of trusting the OS, controller and drive layers. Test, with real power disconnects and active disk writes going on at the time.

If you are worried about power problems and are using racks, here's one easy tip: power distribution unit with meter or comparable but with remote on-off. It's quite irritating to lose power because of an overloaded circuit. Wikipedia saw it happen once at rack level when more machines were being added and possibly a second time related to a circuit breaker trip.

If it is an APC BE725BB and the sound is a hissing sound, then it is a defect (not safety related, just annoying), and you can get it exchanged.

As to modems, I've wondered about that... My modem cables all run thru a heavy-duty surge unit; one hopes that helps

It doesn't. I did the math once on the Surge protectors I was selling at Sears -- the best one we had, with the $20K protection policy -- it could handle 2500 joule if I recall.

Assuming room temperature and nice even numbers (so 25 deg C), that could boil:

2500_J ~= 600 cal.
600cal/(75deg C) = 8

That is a whopping 8 ml of water.

How much energy you think is in that lightning bolt traveling down the phone line?

Modern surge protectors are to protect against in-home spikes -- buy them based on how much insurance you want, and ignore the power rating. But make sure they say that they cover lighting!

Or buy transformer / inductor based protection, which costs an assload more -- something like these