UPS Market Review and Buying Guide

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on October 27, 2008 at 2:42 AM

We had covered this Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) market review few months ago, however, changes take place in days now. As the energy crisis continue in Pakistan, in fact it has gone worse, people are again rushing towards UPS markets to get themselves electricity backups.

Thanks to winter, general people may not require UPS units as they did in hot summer, but businesses, students, and those who want to remain in tact with their electrical devices are in crucial situation due to unannounced and long run power failures.

Okay, I am covering only UPS market review, hopefully I will bring forward Generators’ market review as well in coming days, but lets focus on options and prices for UPS units in this article.

We saw two very significant things, one that UPS market is undergoing tremendous rush, and same is the case with prices. By the way, these prices went down in month of Ramadan (as there were no power outages then), but once again UPS businesses have gone high.

We noted that average cost of a Rs. 10,000 UPS has increased by almost 30 percent when compared to prices in May-June 2008. Retailers say this increment is due to the fact that manufacturers have increased prices of raw material on pretext of higher production cost due to higher imports of accessories.

A survey of retailers unveiled that UPS with a capacity of running two fans and two lights is hot item, and its sale has gone as high as 30 percent. It merits mentioning that this is least powered UPS available in the market, and is mostly used by small to mid sized shopkeepers and home users.

It merits mentioning here that there are two types of UPS available, imported ones and locally assembled. Retailers said that buyers prefer locally made UPS units for two reasons. 1 – They are inexpensive, 2 – Imported UPS units come with no warranty, hence more risk for buyers.

As the demand is increasing, there are more people getting involved in making of these local made UPS units. This retailer named, Hafiz Imran confirmed that there are tens of UPS manufacturing plants working in Rawalpindi. By the way, Daily Time lately reported that there are around 45 manufacturing units of UPS are working in the different parts of the Karachi only as cottage industry. The wholesalers have doubled their orders in order to meet the growing demand.

It was also reported that there comes lots bugs and after sale complains due to ordinary quality and unqualified technicians who make these UPS units in lesser time.

With UPS units, there come batteries, which are used with UPS units to keep your electrical devices alive – and scenario is not different of batteries as well, as prices have gone high here too.
So this is what the market has been undergoing, now check out these tips that you must consider before buying a UPS

Things to consider for Buying a UPS

• Try to put minimum load on UPS, that is don’t try to put all electrical devices on your UPS, instead make sure that only power critical devices are on UPS
• Once you have decided what items you will be running on UPS, calculate their power load. For this, don’t rely on UPS shops, instead ask for electrician in your colony and let him calculate the power load that you will be running on UPS. For instance, a computer with 17 inch monitor is likely to require 400 to 450 watts. Similarly, calculate your entire load and make sure what power do you require from this UPS.
• Go into main electrical markets of your city, instead of your corner electrical shop. Check around in couple of shops for the rates for the power your need. Let’s assume you need a UPS of 1000 Watts, then ask around what quotes you get.
• Please note that there are NO OFFICIAL RATES, so you will have to do little research to save you couple of thousand Rupees
• Please make sure that battery is nothing to do with your UPS. Your batteries will be responsible for backup time. So if you purchase a low ampere battery, it will give you lesser time and vice versa.
• Once your UPS is ready, make sure that it is giving output of exactly what you had asked for. For this purpose you can keep along your cousin or friend who knows a little about electrical meters, ask retailer (shopkeeper) to verify that this UPS is giving out proper voltages.
• If you are planning to use computer with this UPS, make sure that UPS unit supports it. For this direct the shopkeeper to make it computer complaint. (They make little configuration changes in your UPS, which prevents your Computer rebooting when electricity goes down.

Prices for UPS Units with Built in Dry Batteries

These UPS units come with built in Dry Batteries, and stabilizers. Means you get a once pack solution and simply take it home. But make sure that back-up duration for Buil in Dry Batteries’ UPS units is between 10 to 15 minutes only - Meaning that these are mainly for computers and for just saving your files and allowing you enough time to shut down your computer. (In case you need more backup time, then check for below given UPS prices that come without Batteries – and you can add up batteries to get more back up time)

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Weak Hotspots Can Cause you Security Risks

Posted by: Muhammad Ali Raza on October 16, 2008 at 9:07 AM

New attack method has been designed by hackers to get your system infected. We, very frequently, use Wi-Fi (wireless) access points in our offices, home, universities and public places such as restaurants and airports. Microsoft Windows actually tends to remember our previous Wi-Fi sessions, so that it can communicate with known Wi-Fi networks to connect your PC or laptop by sending synchronization packages, and all this happens without your approval.

Hacker used this function as a attacking method, as they send you requests to accept their networks as your Wi-Fi connections. These requests can be like “Hey it’s me your office access point connect here” or “This is your home network connect this”.

Normal users, like many of us, will connect these networks, but doing so will you get to bunch or attacks on your machine, as your operating system or application gives hackers unauthorized access to your system.
You cant skip these hacking requests, as they are carried away automatically. So you cant stop this but there are some ways to do some tweaking to keep such attacks busy for sometime and to put more effect to get them access to your system.

• Keep your wireless card (Wi-Fi) devices turned off when not in use
• Make sure what network you are connecting to
• Keep you WiFi cache data clean
• Use WPA2 with AES encryption method for your home or office networks.

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Copy Data from Badly Damaged and Scratched CDs and DVDs

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on August 28, 2008 at 9:55 AM

Many times in my life I found myself in a situation when my DVD writer stopped reading a very important CD or DVD. I am sure all of you may have seen such a irritating situation when you find no other way but to curse your CD or DVD.

Okay don’t do that anymore, because there is a solution called Copy Cat 2.0. Yes, this is an application that can recover data from your scratched CDs and DVDs. Frankly speaking, I just tested this software, and it worked great.

Remember that a physically damaged disk area cannot be copied from CD or DVD in any case. What Copy Cat does in such a situation is that if such damaged area comes between a big file then Copy Cat skips the bytes which are not readable from file and copies all other bytes.

So don’t claim that it is not copying all of your data, but I assure you that this software is going to give you back the maximum amount of data from your badly damaged CD or DVD. Another plus is that Copy Cat can also copy data from hard disk area which is partially not readable.

Unlike Windows copy operation it does not stop the copy if bad area found. It is compatible with XP and Vista and above all, it is a freeware.

Download Copy Cat from Official Site
Download Copy Cat from Rapidshare

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Pentium 4 on Sale @ Rs. 399 Per Kilo

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on August 13, 2008 at 7:37 AM

I had heard from someone that wholesale computers are sold by weighting them. But now the time has come where this idea is being floated into retail market.

Yea man… now this chap in Karachi is selling Penitum 4 at Rs. 399 per Kilo…That’s really interesting. Furthermore, the banner ad (written in Urdu) mentions that a PC wont be more than 10-15 KG so that count around Rs. 4000 to Rs. 6000 (Less than $100)

Defiantly a very attractive catch phrase, given that this PC would be a Celeron Pentium 4 and with low RAM and hard disk. Anyway, number is there, go and check them

For those who can’t Read Urdu, this banner says as following

Save Thousands of Rupees (Rupee is Pakistani Currency), buy Computers as per weight
Pentium 4 Available in only Rupees 399 Per Kilo
Note: Pentium 4 is Less 10-15 KG for sure…
Al Madina Computers
0300-8258861

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How to become a billionaire?

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on July 28, 2008 at 4:12 AM

aIn his early days of cricket career, Virender Sehwag was once asked after completing a blazing century: “What distinguishes you from Sachin Tendulkar?”

He simply smiled and smartly said: “Our bank balance!”

Does money matter a lot? If yes, then how can I earn it? You must have thought the same question, numerous times, like I do.

As they say, “Truth is stranger than fiction” but remember, it’s true only for sometimes, remaining many times, the ‘Fiction’ works fine. It may look fictious to earn billions, in a short span of time, and that too without a single penny in your pocket.

My advice for myself and all my fellows is not to worry, we still have chance as it’s not money you need in the start, its brain.

It was a cold evening of 1934 in England, 23 years old Percy Shaw, a poor electrician with nothing in his hand, badly hungry, nothing much to wear in cold winter, wondering hopelessly on the roads of London. He never knew that his next moment was going to change his entire life, when at once he saw a ‘cat’ crossing him.

The lightning eyes of the cat showed Shaw, a way to his success. He got an idea from the glowing eyes and introduced the ‘Cat Eyes’, which help millions of people in the nights on the roads now. His discovery made him earn a lot.

What Mr. Shaw basically did? Nothing but got an idea from an observation and implemented it. We have many other examples, where people earned money and fame just because of keen observations and then manipulating those observations into a theory or a rule.

Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists ever, saw an apple falling onto the ground. No one knew until then that why things fall on ground instead of flying into sky? He considered the situation and made a rule, i.e. gravitation energy, which completely changed the shape of Classical Physics.

Now talking other way, he could be wrong, his theory can be incomplete. For example he stated, ‘All matter falls on earth with same velocity, regardless of their masses’, but why does a cotton piece not come with the same velocity as like a stone? May be it’s a mystery and yet to be solved. And the one, who will solve it, will be the King of Classical Physics.

We all know about the ascension of Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) when he traveled millions of miles in seconds, it’s another mystery to be solved. As we know, according to Albert Einstein ‘Matter and Energy are interconvert able’. So if there is any mechanism by which matter, means human is converted into energy i.e. light and then re-convertible into matter (human) then it’s really possible to travel 3,000,000 Km/sec. It’s the mechanism which is not known, but the idea is there. Now who will execute it?

Hazrat Essa (S.A) gave lives to a dead. Is it possible for us too? I know it is. All you need is to learn that knowledge, learn that mechanism. Some people will oppose me here, but every thing in this world is being carried by some scientific rules, Nothing is non-logical. Miracles are basically what we don’t know how they happen. But all miracles strictly follow the scientific rule, and contain a sound logic with in them. For instance, before the discovery of gravitation energy every one used to term the solar system as a miracle i.e. how come such big gigantic planets move and are so much accurate with their circulation? What thing is forcing these gigantic particles to move? Is some one pulling them? Are they all miracles? But gravitational energy has proved every thing.

We need to discover these mysteries, for ourselves, for the betterment of Mankind. Every thing which comes into our mind is possible. But how?

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State of UPS Market in Pakistan – Sale Going Down

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on July 11, 2008 at 12:15 PM

UPS sale in Pakistan is going down after reaching considerable saturation level. No doubt that power crisis in Pakistan is not resolved yet, however, you can easily get UPS in local markets at comparatively low rates than of one month earlier prices.

A through discussion with electronics business owners of College Road, Rawalpindi, it was revealed that the availability of UPS is not an issue anymore. Now anyone can walk in and get his/her UPS of any range (range means the power of UPS in watts).

Uninterrupted Power Supply or largely known as UPS units can support almost any home appliance ranging from a tube light to AC (Air Condition). You need to select the UPS as per your power requirements, depending on your usage and appliances that you are likely to use with UPS. I am giving below table that will help you select the power of UPS for your home or business needs.

Please note that these prices are of without batteries. You will have to get the battery along too.

Note: Please don’t claim these prices, as they may vary from area to area. These prices were to give you an idea about the market.

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Apple Opens its Retail Store in Lahore - iPhone Missing on Stands

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on July 10, 2008 at 10:16 AM

Its quite an old news, but I thought my readers my like exploring it, along with some Pics of Apple’s existence may give a better idea about This Apple’s store in Lahore. US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson herself had launched this Apple Computers store in Lahore around a month ago.

Apple’s debutant store in Pakistan, named as iStore, sits in PACE, Lahore; and it is reportedly not a big one as of Apple’s standards. Yet you may find Apple’s killer gadgets like iPod and others. Don’t expect any iPhone there, but only the flayers unveiling the glory of iPhone to Pakistani people.

It must be noted that this is not an exclusively Apple’s retail store, instead it happens to be the join venture between Raffles, Apple’s authorized distributor in Pakistan since 2006 and Apple Computers itself.

Raffles have taken Apple’s products in multiple cities of Pakistan, including, Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Faisalabad and Multan. Click here for their contact details in these cities.

Tons of thanks to Irfan for allowing me to post his exclusive pictures of the iStore.

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