You know those projects you keep putting off, for one reason or another? For ages now, I’ve been planning a small upgrade for my home office to use two uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), rather than one. I finally bit the bullet this week. My old UPS unit had ceased to hold any juice. It was functioning only as a surge suppressor, rather than an uninterruptible power supply.

And that wasn’t the worst of it … no … the blasted beeping was the worst …

So I took a trip out to the closest Staples Store, where I quickly found the display of uninterruptible power supply units. My choices were limited to a brand I knew (APC) and an unfamiliar (and less than memorable) brand. Rather than roll the dice on an unknown (at least to yours truly) brand, I decided to opt for the APC units.

I picked up an APC Back UPS ES 550 and a Back UPS ES 350 for around a hundred bucks. I was blown away by how (relatively) inexpensive the technology has become.

I’m using the 550 for my desktop PC and the 350 for my networking gear. The 350 handles the cable modem, firewall router, wireless router, and VOIP box … ensuring that I’ll still have those precious minutes of online time from my notebook as well as my office (VOIP) phone.

Cheap insurance for about a hundred bucks …

[tags]uninterruptible power supplies[/tags]