At 06:28 11/11/02, Ultra (Jun Quan) wrote:
>I hope someone can give me an idea on UPS advice.
>I don't have UPS at home, but I always wanted one.
>Now I'm ready to get one.
>**Price based on 500VA UPS while Liebert is 33% more
>expensive than OPTI, and SOLO is somewhere in between.


Hi Jun Quan

I have no experience with Liebert or SOLO products. I realize
that you are in Australia, but maybe the following can help.

In the last seven years, I have bought 8 APC UPSs for my home
computers and have never regretted paying extra for APC. (Why 8
of them? I have 4 computers now...and the first three UPSs that
I bought turned out to be too small in capacity after I had
upgraded the target computers with extra peripherals.) The
batteries in these APC UPSs last about three years before
they (just the batteries) need to be replaced. (The battery
packs are relatively inexpensive.)

I doubt that 500VA will be large enough for you. 500VA is less
than 375 Watts (AC current). If you have a power failure, you
probably want to be able to keep the monitor powered up for a
minute or two so you can close down application programs and
save data. So you will probably want to have your monitor run
off the UPS as well as the CPU box.) But if your monitor
degausses when you power it up, it will momentarily draw lots
of power. My brother has a 700VA OptiUPS and if he he tries
plugging his monitor into the UPS (along with the CPU box),
the UPS beeps and shut down when the monitor degausses. This
unfortunately shuts down the computer as well, right in the
middle of booting. His OptiUPS has a brand new battery, the
monitor is admittedly a 21" (Dell/Nokia), but the CPU is just
a 533 MHz Celeron (two 30 GB drives, a CDROM and a CDRW.)
I never had this problem when using a 650 VA UPS and similar
system. Right now I have two dual PIII systems (8 hard drives
and 21" monitors for each), each on an APC SmartUPS 1000VA.
I also have all my network hardware (cable modem, Zywall
router, switch, print server) on a separate UPS.

APC UPS models come in different series (product lines)...for
example: BackUPS, BackUPS Pro, BackUPS Pro PnP, SmartUPS. The
BackUPS models that I have (one bought as recently as last year)
wouldn't run the APC management software (to provide "graceful
shut downs" after power failure)...because they didn't come with
correct (APC specific) RS-232 cables. The BackUPS Pro model I
bought this year allows for graceful shutdown but didn't allow
for full UPS monitoring (temperature, voltage fluctuations,
logging, etc.). The "BackUPS Pro PnP" models (look for the "PnP"
in the name) do all that. All BackUPS (regular and Pro) models
output a "stepped approximation to a sinewave" (when running off
battery) while the SmartUPS series (much more expensive) output
a true sinewave.

I would recommend at least a 650VA UPS for you if you have an
Athlon or P4 system with up to date 3D video card... and want
the monitor to run off the UPS.

Regards,
Bill

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