I don't understand the whole UPS thing. We had like one blackout in the past 10 years here. Even if I lost 5 minutes of work (I use ctrl+s a lot), it doesn't justify paying for some special device or switch to a laptop. Can someone explain the necessity of UPS?

it allows for safe power downs(and protects from surges too i believe, but a surge protector is good enough for this). i'm not sure why skytiger is so obsessed with them, fairly certain that's litterally been his entire argument. could a mod lock this thread? it's becoming a bit pathetic(mostly because skytiger keeps saying "UPS!!!!!", clearly he's gotten screwed in the past, and is out to ensure noone else meets a similar fate), and i no longer need help at this point(i do thank everyone that has pitched in thus far though).

Skytiger, I think you're overstating the cost of a a UPS. I bought a 900w UPS for around $160 USD, and it runs my old desktop (900w PSU, Radeon 6990, 6 hard disks, OC'ed Core 2 Duo) and 30" LCD just fine for about 40 minutes in the case of a power outage -- not enough to continue on with my workday, but enough to finish up what I was doing and shut down nicely.

But I'll say again, Samoth, that your experiences are what I'd consider atypical. I've never experienced quite the disparity you say you've seen between a new (non atom) laptop and generations-old desktop. If anything, it probably isn't the hardware components, but the hardware configuration. I can imagine that a laptop with <= 4GB ram, combined with a low-power 4200rpm hard disk, and aggressive spin-down of the disk to save power might behave similar to the way you describe. My higher-end laptop, which I've got about $1600 USD into, is snappy as can be -- I've been choosy about the hardware, granted, but its hardly and expensive or exotic configuration. Again, I'm not saying you don't get more for a same-cost desktop, just that the performance picture you're painting is atypical.

Regarding the latest-gen atom argument, that's a bit of a misnomer and you can be forgiven for not understanding. All Atoms to date have the same internal architecture as the first Atoms. They've done a feature shrink and eaked out ~200 Mhz headroom at the high-end, but only the as-yet-unreleased next-gen atom actually changes the execution engine at all.

In the last 5 years, the only time my pc is shutdown, is when there's been a power cut. The only thing that broke in my computer was 2 video card, and it wasn't because of the power surge but because they where both fanless and i like to play games for an extended period of time. Although id like to get one (power cut was becoming anoying a couple of years ago), i dont see that as a "vital" component imo. As long as you have a good power bar to protect from power surges and brownouts, it should be enough.