Sylvia Else wrote:
D Yuniskis wrote:

Dunno. As cynical as I am, I still find it hard to believe the
manufacturers are intentionally trying to cook batteries.

Particularly if their users do as I do, and just buy an equivalent SLA
from their local electronics shop, rather than going back to the
manufacture of the UPS.

I think for corporate users this is probably the case -- most
"employees" have no real incentive to save their boss' money :

And, for The Clueless users, they have no idea and would, at
best, drag the whole UPS to the local "Batteries R Us" store
(and pay the same price that they would had they gone to the
manufacturer direct).

I think the latter case is where lots of UPS's get discarded:
"Whew! I only paid $X for the thing and they want $Y just
to replace the battery!"

I've noticed that my new UPS, which I originally though has a custom
pack actually has a battery pack which is just two standard 7.2Ah SLA's
separated by some foam plastic, and stuck together with tape. Maybe they
hope that that way they'll make more sales of replacement batteries. Not
from me, they won't.

Yes, that is true of almost every UPS I've come across.
Standard size batteries gimmicked together in some way
that makes it "easy" for the user to replace the entire
assembly "as a block".

Usually, a (disposable) fuse in series somewhere. I have
seen the fuses used as the "wire" to connect two series
batteries together as well.

Since most standard batteries use fastons, it is easy to
pull the harness off the batteries and use it to "build"
another battery pack. Unfortunately, the connectors that
these battery pack assemblies often use to mate to the
UPS itself tend to be a lot harder to acquire (i.e., don't
ever lose the harness if you want to keep the UPS!). I
have one such UPS in need of a harness, currently. If I
stumble upon a spare, fine. Otherwise, the UPS isn't worth
the cost of buying a new harness (which would probably
only be sold with the batteries attached : )