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Mike Chance in Iowa
11-06-2017, 5:32 PM
your power and/or internet goes out?

Part of this topic is because of other threads, but it's also from recent experience.

A few weeks ago we had an incident involving a vehicle and pole resulting in hazmat team and a road closure for several days. We lost our power and internet. Once our power was restored, we were still without DSL. After learning the neighbor's internet was working, I called our provider the following day and they said it would take another 6 days before they would come out and check on ours!

My business is internet based, so I rely on email and the internet to transact with my clients. Thankfully I was able to use my LOML's work unlimited wifi card on my laptop to download email and respond to clients. (Note that I would not have been able to use it on my engraving computer.)

While the power was out, I could have run the laser off the generator but chose to work on computer-related stuff instead.

So, the question for you who run a business or have a dedicated hobby, what would you do if there is a power or other utility outage for several days or longer? Do you have ways that you can still run your equipment?

If your software is subscription-based, can you get any work done in Corel or other software without internet access to log in to it? Will your cloud-based accounting software allow you to save copies of your invoices on you hard drive?

Mark Sipes
11-06-2017, 7:02 PM
I have gone VOIP so the internet is vital to my continued success......... Trifica E-mail/Web Site/Phone. Even Cell phone is ground power based. Without 120v at the plug I am useless........ computer, laser, books..... Walk in customer can be serviced but those in the ethernet mist are out of luck.....

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Nick Hale
11-06-2017, 7:04 PM
All of my computers share files with dropbox. When I loose internet, which in my small town happens a lot. I have to use my phone as a hotspot. Which works just find for dropbox. Loosing actual power would be terrible. I do have access to large generators, but cost of diesel, would kill any profits I made.

Scott Shepherd
11-06-2017, 7:23 PM
It happens. In fact, there are times that we shut everything down on purpose. If we see the power flickering on and off more than a couple times pretty quickly, we move to shut everything down. Not worth the risk to the equipment. We've had stuff fried before. As far as apps and stuff, Quickbooks online is simple, we can just pull it up on an iPad that has a cellular connection and we can do anything we want, do invoices, write checks, whatever. Can't print anything, but most all of our invoices are electronic anyway, so that's no big deal. If the power is out, no worries about subscription based design software because the machines aren't up to run it.

Bottom line, if we lost power for 5 days, we'd have a problem. If we lost internet, we'd be fine. All phone calls are VOIP so we can forward them to a cell phone, and all emails can be done via smartphones, etc. To anyone calling in, they'd never know we were down. Having said that, if we lost power and had to get work out, we have so many customers that have equipment that they'd let us come in and run the jobs we needed to get done, or even bring a laser or two to their shops and setup shop for as long as needed. It's good to have friends in the industry.

Mike Null
11-07-2017, 6:25 AM
Mine is an internet based business but my iPhone is my business phone so I could communicate and receive emails. I have a generator but would not run my equipment with it.

Like Steve, we have some competitors who would run stuff for us if needed.

Gary Hair
11-07-2017, 7:37 AM
Get a generator and a ups and you'll have no problem running computers or lasers. The ups cleans up the (usually) dirty electricity that the generator puts out.

Bill George
11-07-2017, 9:56 AM
Ditto what Gary said, my son has his standby generator set up to run on Natural gas, so in theory all he needs to do is keep oil in it. After a big ice storm we had a few years ago, he ran for 3 days straight until the power lines were repaired.

But running electronics like a computer setup, I would use a power conditioner as suggested.

Ernest Martin
11-07-2017, 11:27 AM
We live in a rural area no major city close by, so our internet is limited at times, but fortunately we are right by a main power line and probably only loose power once a year or less. I have thought over the years about putting in a UPS system with surge protectors as several business in our area have lost a lot of electronic equipment from lightning strikes.

Gary Hair
11-07-2017, 3:20 PM
We live in a rural area no major city close by, so our internet is limited at times, but fortunately we are right by a main power line and probably only loose power once a year or less. I have thought over the years about putting in a UPS system with surge protectors as several business in our area have lost a lot of electronic equipment from lightning strikes.

Since moving to Georgia I've had three power outages - all three were just blips, but they would have been enough to reboot the computer. After the first one I bought 4 ups's - one for each of my primary computers, one for both fiber computers and one for the network server drive and router. It's not worth putting one on the Trotec, if I lose power it will be easy to start the job over or start where it left off. They all have enough capacity to allow me to save whatever is open and shut down if power goes out completely, if it's just a blip then I won't even notice.

Ernest Martin
11-07-2017, 3:36 PM
Its something that we should do but one of those things that just hasn't happened yet