[kwlug-disc] (question) Which UPS to buy?

[unsolicited]

Depends upon your use case.

For the keep the router / cordless phone / switch up across a few second 
power glitch, whatever's cheapest. At that level I believe them all to 
be essentially the same. (Poor, so don't pay more than you have to.) At 
that level they seem to be considered disposable, thus the buy 
replacement battery or new debate.

- moreover, given my recent learning curve, watch whether the batteries 
are 'user' replaceable / have a separate battery compartment, or not. It 
may matter to you (it doesn't to me). Eyes open, is all I'm saying here.

For computers / typical 'tower' UPS to keep them up for a while so you 
can keep working, or at least 10-15 minutes so they can shut down 
cleanly (perhaps on a highly cached SQL server?), different beastie. 
[For which you will pay through the nose, and well beyond, for. How the 
heck a UPS can cost as much and more than a laptop, for the engineering 
within it ... oh never mind.]

Tripp-Lite. Not APC. For the cost / feature value.

Particularly as you will more readily get full time line conditioning 
out of the unit more likely for the cost with Tripp-Lite than APC.

For me, APC has long been doing marketing double-speak. Yes, it's a UPS. 
No, theirs largely doesn't come into play unless there's a power outage. 
So, for a price level, compare feature functionality across 
manufacturers. As far as I have seen, APC always falls to the bottom, or 
just about. (Would be interesting to see the marketing % APC spends over 
other manufacturers.)

YMMV.


On 14-06-02 12:00 PM, William Park wrote:
> Following the current thread on UPS...
>
> For ordinary consumers looking for "cheap" UPS,
> which UPS brand/model should they buy?
>