Yeeeeah, mmmmmkay....

[feren]

Poweroutages are bad, yeah. My UPS is simply not sufficient. It's time to investigate a bigger, better UPS option. Mabye a nice APC 1400....

Weekend report will be written tomorrow.

Comments

Yes.

[roho.livejournal.com]

The average UPS is simply incapable of dealing with ComEd's dumbness. I've been debating something a little more punchy, too...I'd like to put fennec and the modem on at least a couple hours backup time, if possible.

[frostyw.livejournal.com]

How much are you protecting, and how long and how frequent are your power outages? Is it really as bad as it seems you two are making it out to be?

[roho.livejournal.com]

Well, fortunately, they're not too terribly frequent. Unfortunately, ComEd has a strong tendency to go down for long periods of time when they go down. Little brownouts or 5-minute blackouts are one thing, but a good portion of the blackouts seem to be over an hour long.

Myself, personally, I've got a Pentium 120 machine and an ISDN modem on the UPS (no monitor), so it can run for a good hour or so, maybe a little more. I know Fer's got way more on his UPS ;)

Re:

[frostyw.livejournal.com]

Is it a delivery problem or a generation problem, or do they even tell you? I think in this state there would be lawsuits flying at the responsible party. (At least here, while you can choose who generates your energy, you don't have any choice in who delivers it to your home.)

I've got two UPS units. The 500VA covers my main system and monitor and also provides surge protection to my inkjet printer. The 350VA covers meeko.frigiden.net, my UNIX server. My father and my sister have surge protection, and that's it. My sister is moving out soon, and I'm going to encourage her to buy one of the 350VAs because that's all she really needs.

[(Anonymous)]

I offered to pick you up one of those Best Ferrups beasts that take 4 car batteries and can power a small town for several minutes, but noooo, panther is worried about space considerations and says no thanks. Nyah! >:oP

[feren.livejournal.com]

I honestly thought my current UPS would be able to cope. I was wrong.

And the 1400 or 2200 series APC take up less space than those Best Ferrups beasts.

[(Anonymous)]

I dunno. We have probably 50 APC units at work of varying sizes, types, and ages. My experiences with them (and the one lisa currently runs on) leads me to conclude that APC stands for "A Piece of Crap".

We actually had one short out and nearly start a fire in tech core awhile back. I was chastised by my boss for unplugging it rather than letting it kindle so we could get all-new digital gear with the insurance money.

[frostyw.livejournal.com]

You seriously need a new boss if they're more worried about getting insurance money than having other items get damaged.

Just hook up extra batteries

[ronbar.livejournal.com]

All you need to do is hook up some extra batteries in parallel to your UPS' existing batteries. Unfortunately a lot of UPSes use 6v batteries (3 2v lead-acid cells instead of the usual 6 cells in a 12v car battery), so it's not as simple as going to Wal-Mart and getting a couple of the cheap car batteries.

I wonder if any current UPSes use 12v batteries?