[rescue] WTB/Advice: UPSs

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Friday, April 5, 2002 at 15:09:50 (-0500), Joshua D Boyd wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] WTB/Advice: UPSs
>
> Now, assuming that a Back-UPS cost the same amount of money as a quality
> spike protector, which would you choose?

probably the spike protector!  ;-)

(but a spike protector alone won't cost that much -- maybe a protected
line isolator would though....)

I think good clean power that might sometimes fail is better (i.e. leads
to more reliable equipment operation, and maybe longer life) than
failing over to yucky square-wave power, esp. when there's not any line
isolation and voltage regulation in a plain APC Back-UPS.

>  What if the Back-UPS cost less than
> a normal quality spike protector?

Then I'd either buy both, or upgrade all the way to a "real" UPS (which
includes a spike protector) with a similar combined price (eg. a used one!).

One thing APC have with their name, and which they make a big deal
about, is their warranty to replace anything "protected" by their
equipment and damaged by lightning or the like.  Other companies
(including Powerware, nee BEST) have similar warranty agreements too,
but they don't usually make quite so marketing noise about them and they
often don't have as high a value (not that you'd ever realistically have
$25,000 worth of average computer equipment hooked to any given small UPS)

However since all my APC and BEST units are second-hand I'm not sure how
well their warranties would work.  It would have to be one hell of a
strike to knock out the BEST units though -- it's almost infinitely more
likely that such a strike would also affect either the telephone or
cable lines and jump across my modems and into my router and ethernet.

I'd probably try to claim on my household insurance anyway -- much
easier than trying to argue with APC and/or Powerware that their gear
was responsible for leaking the spike even if it's also just a
smoldering pile of junk after the fact....

I have multiple low-grade lightning arrestors on the telephone line (one
in front of the ADSL filter) and in front of the dial-out modems, but
the cable modem is only protected by whatever Rogers installed, and
that's not much (they didn't even ground the distribution box on the
side of the house, and I don't think there's a ground on the splitter
box on the pole either).

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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