Damn, damn, damn! (non Westfield content)

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Life is never completely straightforward is it!

 

So, after the first 2.2 KVA Smart UPS blew, i spotted one - second hand, and a few years old, on eBay, ending Saturday. Not much interest in it on eBay, so i won it at a quite reasonable price. It's batteries are original, so quite old, but no warning light on yet and show reasonable condition with the APC software tools. But I thought I'll swap them to the brand new ones anyway, just to be safe.

 

Doh, it's a slightly different generation UPS to mine and the damned battery plugs are ever so slightly different! Looks like I'll be sending the new batteries back after all, though in this case, I'll probably just get them to swap them for a set that match the "new" UPS.

 

Anyway, many thanks to those that had been in-touch to offer UPS's looks like I'm just about sorted now. At least the server is running on protection again.

[Kingster]

So - just had a power cut/spike and remembered how annoying and expensive it can prove to be when your work suddenly stops etc.

 

Any recommendations on an inexpensive UPS - never actually used one despite being reliant on computers to earn money for the pst 20 odd years!

 

No idea what to look for or what is a waste of time and they seem to be priced at anywhere from £30 to £1000's...

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

I've always tended to use APC, they may or may not be the best/hottest for new features etc, but I've always found them reliable(!) and batteries (which are a consumable) to be readily available, at a good price.

 

My dead 2200 KVA model is the first  on-battery failure I've had with one in twenty five years of using and selling them. And to be fair, it was probably a good twelve or fourteen years old when it blew.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

In terms of size/model, then it depends what devices and what load you've got to cope with. I'm using a larger one, because it's got to run a (proper) server with multiple drives in and Exchange takes a while to shut down sometimes, so I want a guaranteed minimum of thirty minutes battery run time, (up to 15 mins running on battery, followed by 15 minutes to shut down).

 

A regular decent "power" desktop plus monitor (led) will usually do fine on 1000 KVA, and still have reasonable run time, plus time to shut down.

[Kingster]

Cheers Dave

 

Enough for two desktops (27" iMacs) is all I need and they shut down pretty quickly.

 

So something like this or this?

[corsechris]

Have quite a few UPS at work. Mostly APC rack mounted types to hold up entire racks of servers or other kit needing stable and maintained supply. Main criticism of those is no doubt common to them all - give them plenty of space for cooling or they cook the batteries which reduces their life. Funny enough, been doing a round of battery replacements this week.

 

Have a small Merlin-Gerin one at home that seems to do just fine for a 21.5" iMac and an external drive. That 1400VA chap in your second link would be more than fine for the task. Depending on which model of iMac you have, you could be getting close to the 700W load capacity so avoid putting too many peripherals on the UPS. External drives will need to be on there of course, but non essential stuff best left off if you have to choose.

 

A nice touch with the more sophisticated ones is serial comms to the machines they are sustaining so the UPS can trigger a graceful shutdown unattended.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Sorry, can't open the first link, but the second one looks OK.

[Kingster]

first one was a slightly lesser version http://www.pcworldbusiness.co.uk/catalogue/item/P220101P?from=category&heat=title

 

Thanks for the info chaps - I knew someone on here would know about these

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Ah, ok, I'd go for the bigger one - it's a business expenses anyway, and can get written off against tax etc.