UPS... new battery or replace?

[Nate Nagel]

Got an *ancient* (and I do mean ancient) APC UPS... all it does is back up my wireless router. Battery is done. new one I expect to cost $30-40 (which I find extortionate as I buy them for work at about $10 all day but still.)

options:

1) buy a new battery. Be happy for another 5 years or so. Cost $40 max.

2) buy a new true-online UPS for my PC, and rotate the old, sorta-decent one currently serving PC to wireless router duty. Would cost $266 for a

750VA unit with trade in (smallest one that qualifies for trade in credit) or $252 for a 1000VA unit (yeah, I don't understand that either.)

which would you do? This is an old UPS that I scavenged from a previous employer something like 7-8 years ago, and at that time it was being discarded because the battery was dead then, so it now could conceivably be as many as 15 years old.

I want to go true online but worth the cost? Have had no problems with my setup so far. (touch wood.)

nate

[Robert Green]

What size battery is it? 12V 7AH?

-- Bobby G.

[Nate Nagel]

decision just got more difficult. I thought all "Smart-UPS" products were true online, but they're not. However, they ARE the ones claimed to have a true sine wave output, not an "approximation" of a sine wave.

The real true-online deal would be $985, so that's off the table.

I do like the idea of giving my stuff cleaner power on battery, but then again, I'm thinking, just spend the $40 for a new battery, because nothing's blowed up so far? (well, truth be told, i've been going through wireless routers like candy, but previously I had same UPS running my PC, which is still fine, so I blame the routers.)

nate

[G. Morgan]

Hi Nate,

If your UPS has a line-conditioner and software "Parachute", I would replace the batt. You can get a 7.5 Ah gel-cell for $20 at an alarm-parts supplier.

If not, I'd go for one with a line conditioner and the safe-shutdown software.

[shellyf_DELETE_]

Time for a new one, for computer and some peripherals, I use:

$100. Replacement battery years down the road is @$25 hth

[trader4]

I think the first question here is what's the overall mission objective? I haven't had a UPS on any of my home computers or routers. The only problems I've had are if the power goes out, which is infrequent, I might lose whatever work I had open. Even that isn't for sure, as many apps do timed saves of the open documents, so you may only lose the last 15 mins.

I've never had a disk corrupted by the power failing, or anything like that. Nor can I recall ever losing any document, etc that I was working on that amounted to anything. So, I personally wouldn't spend $40, let alone several hundred on any UPS.

[Nate Nagel]

I have had all of the above happen. In fact at one house in which I lived, the power went out so often that it managed to corrupt a PC that was running *LINUX*.

Thing was so obsolete it wasn't worth the time to reinstall... into the trash it went.

I won't be without a UPS again. I have two because if the cable modem and wireless router lose power even for a second or two it's annoying to wait for them to reboot.

nate

[Nate Nagel]

not a concern... not running PCs. just cable modem and wireless router. PC is on newer UPS elsewhere in house. I did have software for this one but I lost it and the cable long ago. no big deal.

this one uses a 12AH SLA battery.

nate

[Tony Hwang]

Hmmm, I gave been living in this house for alnost 20 years since it's built. During that time total time for power outage was ~30 minutes. I don't think I need a UPS, just another thing to look after. We have 3 Desk top, 3 laptops scattered around in the house as well as WiFi Skype phone.

[Tegger]

Nate Nagel wrote in news: [e-mail]:

And I like the idea of being a multi-millionaire. But I'm not, so I live with what I've got.

APC UPS's are not "true online", and they don't make a true sine wave, but you know what? The equipment does not seem to give a shit one way or the other.

I've had Alphaservers and all sorts of network gear running tickety-boo for many years on cheapo APCs. Never an issue. If you have routers failing, it's because nobody does pre-delivery testing anymore. Testing costs more than shipping whatever came off the line and dealing with warranty claims when they happen. Remember when hard-drives were each individually tested, and the results written on a sticker /by hand/?

I think you can find better things to worry about. Buy a new anything-brand UPS and be happy. Unless you're the sort that /likes/ things held together with duct tape and chewing gum because it came for free. In that case, you're beyond help.

[clare]

I definitely prefer the on-line, and I DETEST APC, but that's personal. If you buy the batteries for $10 at work, buy one for yourself and pay the boss.

The low-end UPS units I service for one of my customers go through a battery about every 18 months or so - and generally outlast 6 or more battery replacements. (have actually only had one non-APC unit and 3 APC units actually FAIL)

[Ed Pawlowski]

Ask at work if you can buy one of the $10 batteries.

[The Daring Dufas]

Last one I bought was $16.00 last year at the electronic supply house. At one time, I would go to Crown Battery Wholesale Co. and pay $7.00 each by the case for the 12volt 7ah with 1/4" fast on terminals.

TDD

[The Daring Dufas]

I'm with you Nate, every piece of computer gear I have is on a UPS. I had to reset the breaker last night when the electric heater warmed up the breaker enough. Computer, cable modem and router never skipped a a beat. :-)

TDD

[mm]

Even at some place like Battery Warehouse?

I'd buy the battery and get 7 to 15 more years out of the UPS.

[The Daring Dufas]

I had some Intertel phone systems that required true sine wave UPS units. This was back in the early 1990's and I don't run into that any more with newer phone systems.

TDD

[Nate Nagel]

That's the only place I know that'll sell retail... well I think there's a Batteries Plus around somewhere but their prices even listed online are silly... just bought a friend some batteries for her UPS last week actually, hers used 2x 6.2's and those were about $30 apiece. way more expensive than BW's online price, but where else was I going to go?

nate

[George]

What is the additional part of the plan you didn't mention? I have never seen a gel cell last 7 years in service and certainly not 15.

[N8N]

You're lucky. Some places I've lived power has been pretty good. The place I'm thinking of though, as often as not the clock on the microwave would be flashing when I got home from work. The power would never *stay* out for long - it'd just blip out long enough to reset the clocks and reboot the computers. never went more than a couple days without that happening at least once. sometimes it'd happen several times a day.

For whatever reason, PEPCO seems to do a much better job than BG&E, so I'm glad I don't live in MD anymore (for many reasons.)

nate

[N8N]

Hah. we're so uptight, you have no idea. Worse than ADI. We sell only to contractors, and I ain't a contractor :/

Who do you like, if not APC? I know they're consumer grade cheez, but that's what I can afford, and the one with the dead battery has been serving me faithfully for years, although I know the inverter output probably looks more like the teeth on a dog clutch than a sine wave. Not much variety on the shelves at the Big Boxen, but I'm not averse to ordering from newegg, etc. if I have to. Tripp-Lite? Other?

I have seen rack-mount APCs used for access control system backup, so I just ASSumed that they weren't that bad, but I'm certainly not an IT guy, the equipment that I specialize in has the backup built in so I never have to worry about it...

nate