Plugging a UPS-surge protector into a surge protection strip: good, bad, silly?

Depends on the UPS. It certainly won’t hurt. The surge protector pretty much only trips a breaker if you have a power spike.. The UPS should do the same and give you a chance to shutdown and save stuff if your power goes out.

It might be overkill. But it won’t hurt, and better safe than sorry.

Maybe it’s redundant, but when it comes to technology, redundancy is rarely a bad thing.

<off topic>Do you have a external hard drive that you back-up to regularly? Odds are a hard drive failure will screw you over before a power outage will.</back-up nazi>

Most phone systems run on huge banks of batteries, charged by a rectifier unit that’s fed conditioned power. My site had a spike sensor that would switch over to our own generator; then would monitor the grid and switch back 45 minutes after power is stable. Otherwise we could run almost indefinitely so long as there is still natural gas. That was on a branch campus.

A cheap surge protector would save you the hassle of replacing fuses in a UPS should you get a surge. Many cheap surge protectors can simply be exchanged for new ones (within the warranty) rather than buying a new fuse.