UPS Battery

Ah, the power of marketing, regardless of quality……

Twenty years ago, one of my clients ran a substantial CAD center in a town about 60 miles west of Washington, D.C. One day, a farmer, 10 miles down the road, chopped an underground power line and left them with about $300,000 of charcoal which had been plotters, Compaq 286’s, big monitors, etcetera. They then actually employed an engineer to evaluate and recommend UPS and filtering products to prevent it’s recurrence. The result was a strong endorsement of Best Power Products; the batteries were far better, the electronics of higher quality, and the filtering was infinitely superior.

For over a decade after that, if anyone asked, I sold them a Best Power UPS; but, with APC’s agressive marketing and lower prices, I often found that the client chose APC because they didn’t understand the differences. One, for example, being a lead-acid battery instead of a gel cell saves a significant amount at the price of 1/2 the lifespan.

To this day, I tell clients to mark the APC with the date of purchase and to replace it after three years because the battery costs as much as a new unit.

Eaton has since bought the remnants of Best Power and, if you really want a better product, CDW, TigerDirect, and PCMall all carry their products. Just don’t expect to find them at the local stores.

Uninterruptible Power Supply ( UPS ) do you have one…

I’ve wanted an Uninterruptible Power Supply ( UPS ) for many years. The other day I finally got one. Over the years a few people have debated the usefulness of this device. Many people will tell you that you should unplug any and all appliances and ot…

[...] In last night’s email newsletter ( picks at lockergnome.com), I linked to a video question submitted through my EyeJot video widget. Recently, Aaron asked a question about Uninterruptible Power Supplies. I suggested getting a unit that included Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR), subsequently hyperlinking everyone to a classic story on UPS batteries. Fellow Lockergnome subscriber Brian Newell submitted: Regarding Aaron’s question about UPS, wouldn’t a line conditioner or isolation transformer work just as well? It sounds like there are no true power outages so a battery backup might be overkill (although that’s not necessarily a BAD thing). After a quick check on tripplite.com, comparable MSRP pricing on Tripplite products are $172 for a 1200 watt line conditioner (LC1200), $400 for a 1000 watt isolation transformer (IS1000) and $599 for a 940 watt UPS (TE1200). And, yes, I realize that an isolation transformer in a home is overkill. Whoever heard of the need for an electrical circuit in a home to be completely dedicated from other circuits just to run a computer? Although if you’re talking about an expensive home theater system or the downtime someone might experience while waiting for replacement components after electrical damage. [...]

OK folks, We have a pretty intense backup system here and we need it. If our servers go down we are in serious trouble. You can have the best backup system in the world, and the best batteries in the world, but if you don’t test them routinely, your system can and will go down eventually. the battery verification on the ups system it’s self is just not up to par these days. We use an soctester. No it doesn’t test your socks. You can find it here http://soctester.com It is the top of the line and after testing several other different units, we decided the soc was worth it. We tried out midtronics, sdi, zts, and adi(act) and countless others(It was quite exhausting). They all claimed to be accurate and reliable(with shocking results). Anyway I had to throw in my 2 cents. Hope it helps divert the anguish. Good luck keeping the power flowing! -R