On 13 Aug 2007 01:07:28 GMT, Arno Wagner
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Doc wrote:
Recently I asked about suggestions regarding a UPS. I ended up
getting an 875 VA 525 Watt "Geek Squad" model from Best Buy - yeah,
yeah, everyone says Geek Squad stuff is overhyped junk, but at $69 on
sale, the price seemed right.

The price is all wrong. Nobody can build a decent product with
these specs for that price. You cannot even buy the components
needed in decent quality for that price.


Depending on your definition of "decent", this may be true,
but it's going to be roughly equivalent to what you'd buy
from APC as a 500VA for about $50 so if that's what the
budget allows, it's not an exceptionally low price (also
considering you can sometimes get the APC discounted or with
rebate putting it closer to $20-30 than to $50.


It seems to handle my 2 computers fine - a PIV 2.4 gig and a PIII 933
mhz sharing a monitor. With both machines and the monitor on, the
onboard readout shows them well below the unit's max capacity, drawing
about .250 - .260 kw (which I assume translates to 250 - 260 watts) ,
with an estimated run time of 9 minutes with both computers. More than
enough to get me through short hit outages with both machines running.

And with the el-cheapo battery in there, that figure will be down to
1 minute in no time. And you would be well advised to test the
claim. Software can be made to lie to you, you know.

There's no reason to belive the battery is especially cheap,
it's going to be a standard lead-acid which is quite a
mature technology today, a commodity item essentially and
all that's really at question is whether the manufacturer
conservatively rated the unit or if it's unlikely to meet
the specs due to design budget constructions. Either way,
it's probably $70-100 worth of UPS, it will likely do as
well as anything else available for the same price.

If one were to pay = 2X as much, naturally the expectation
would be it's either fancier or higher capacity or an online
type, etc, but there is no expectation the battery is
inherantly any higher quality per se, though probably higher
capacity due to being a larger size or a series of two
batteries.