+1
I've got an APC SmartUPS 750 and an APC SmartUPS SC 420. The battery in the small one ran out a fortnight ago and the 750's died today. They're a bit expensive from eBuyer; I did find one supplier at about half the price, but if I throw in a Titan GPU I could probably get away short of a thousand quid...

(Lots of text to follow, most of it is probably trivial, but on-topic)

My 1400 SmartUPS is ancient. Nothing fancy on the front, just two buttons: off, and on/test, but it does have two sets of 5 LEDs for battery charge and load, and connects with a DB-9 serial cable (and my motherboard still has one of those, surprisingly).

The 1300 BackUPS has a digital display with a bunch of stats on it (input voltage, output voltage, load (watts), load %, battery run-time), and connects with that fancy USB cable that has a RJ50 (10P10C) connector on the end of it. That can connect to the 2200 BackUPS, too.

It was really cool after I upgraded to Windows 7 from XP, and changed UPSes at the same time, because with XP and the serial cable, it would know that there was a UPS hooked up, but wouldn't really do much else, like let you configure a shutdown at a percentage level and so forth.. it was strictly time values. With the USB cable and win7, I plugged the cable in, and it took about 5 seconds and Windows said "Hey, you have a battery now. I can let you configure it just like a laptop by using percentages and actions for them."

So I set it to warn at 75% and shut down at 50%, and BOINC is set to suspend when on battery. When I'm crunching, the UPS shows ~275 watts and estimates 27 minutes, but in the past, once it got down to about 35-40% remaining, it shut itself off. I think it was too much load for not enough juice still in the batteries, so just to be safe, I set windows to shut down at 50%. Gives me about 10 minutes to finish up what I'm doing and make a decision of "stay up and hope power comes back, or go ahead and shut down?"

I also have my cable modem and router on it, too, because if both lose power, I get a new IP from DHCP which makes memorizing the new address and re-configuring remote devices annoying, but if the router can stay powered up, then when cable comes back, it can ask the DHCP server "hey, I still have a lease for this IP, can I still use it?"

---

Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Does that mean you don't consider the Cyberpower mentioned
a true sine wave UPS?

Cyber Power calls it 'simulated sine wave' output when on battery.
They do not elaborate on that.
So I would say not.

?
PP1500SWT4
"The Smart App Sinewave Series is designed for corporate networks and telecommunication equipment that require high-performance pure sine wave technology."
"On Battery Waveform Sine Wave"

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Does that mean you don't consider the Cyberpower mentioned
a true sine wave UPS?

Cyber Power calls it 'simulated sine wave' output when on battery.
They do not elaborate on that.
So I would say not.

?
PP1500SWT4
"The Smart App Sinewave Series is designed for corporate networks and telecommunication equipment that require high-performance pure sine wave technology."
"On Battery Waveform Sine Wave"

Yes....
Cyber Power does also make true sine wave backups.
The ones I have are the 1500AVR, which have the 'simulated sine wave' output.
There is a price difference between the two versions.

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

And also to add another note about the sine wave for output.. there is of course a logical theory that you can daisy-chain UPS units together instead of paying for one with more capacity, but most manufacturers make their units spit out a sine wave that works for 99.999% of equipment, but UPS units see it as an unusable power source, which keeps you from chaining them together.

Also, if the incoming power is too noisy/dirty, they won't use it, either. I had that issue with a small generator a few years ago. It would power a freezer, window A/C, and lights just fine, but it would not power my UPS. Got a more powerful generator and that problem was solved.

---

Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Does that mean you don't consider the Cyberpower mentioned
a true sine wave UPS?

Cyber Power calls it 'simulated sine wave' output when on battery.
They do not elaborate on that.
So I would say not.

?
PP1500SWT4
"The Smart App Sinewave Series is designed for corporate networks and telecommunication equipment that require high-performance pure sine wave technology."
"On Battery Waveform Sine Wave"

Yes....
Cyber Power does also make true sine wave backups.
The ones I have are the 1500AVR, which have the 'simulated sine wave' output.
There is a price difference between the two versions.

Generally when they say "simulated sine wave" it means a stepped sine wave instead of a straight square wave like older UPS models would output. Here is a picture of the 3 types overlapped for comparison.
Generally manufactures now list the "Waveform Type" in their specs & it looks like the even the cheapest models from the major manufactures no longer use square wave output.

---

SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

I really like the Cyberpower PP2200SW UPS. I have two large systems with one 30" flat panel display connected to it, both machines running at 100% utilization, and this UPS remains totally silent at 50% capacity.

http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/products/ups-systems/smart-app-ups/pp-series/PP2200SW.html?selectedTabId=specifications&imageI=#tab-box

You do need to review the specs carefully, since Cyberpower produces a blizzard of models. The PP2200SW produces a pure sine wave on batteries, but other models do not.

I usually suggest people who are in the market for a UPS to not skimp on the unit, especially if they like a quiet room, because running a highly-loaded (at 60+ percent capacity) UPS frequently results in very, very loud fan noise. It may seem like a waste initially, but I usually calculate my total load in watts and then double that figure to arrive at an ideal UPS capacity, insuring the unit won't be heavily loaded with a fan going totally nuts all the time...

---

"History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there." - Santayana