On Feb 17, 10:44*am, "Pete C." wrote:
Nate Nagel wrote:

Got an *ancient* (and I do mean ancient) APC UPS... *all it does is back
up my wireless router. *Battery is done. *new one I expect to cost
$30-40 (which I find extortionate as I buy them for work at about $10
all day but still.)

options:

1) buy a new battery. *Be happy for another 5 years or so. *Cost $40 max.

2) buy a new true-online UPS for my PC, and rotate the old, sorta-decent
one currently serving PC to wireless router duty. *Would cost $266 for a
750VA unit with trade in (smallest one that qualifies for trade in
credit) or $252 for a 1000VA unit (yeah, I don't understand that either..)

which would you do? *This is an old UPS that I scavenged from a previous
employer something like 7-8 years ago, and at that time it was being
discarded because the battery was dead then, so it now could conceivably
be as many as 15 years old.

I want to go true online but worth the cost? *Have had no problems with
my setup so far. *(touch wood.)

nate

The simple answer here is to assess the quality of the current UPS and
compare the cost of new batteries to the cost of a new UPS of comparable
quality.

I have the same situation here, where the UPS that supports my garage
server rack is an old but high quality Best Fortress 1420 (the good
version with 4 digit display). This UPS is at least 14 years old and
it's original batteries are finally failing. It uses two 17ah gel cells
and clearly the cost of those new batteries is much lower than the cost
of a comparable new UPS.

In my office I have a cheap little Tripp-Lite branded POS UPS that cost
$100 new. The status display on the thing died in the first year of
use, though the UPS function still works properly. Clearly when the
battery in that UPS goes it will make more sense to buy a complete new
unit rather than replace just the battery.

Yes, I think you understood my question correctly. But I really don't
have any feel for the quality of my old UPS - it's a Back-UPS 650 IIRC
- vs. anything that I could buy new for a reasonable price.

However, I suspect that I am likely going to try a new battery in it
anyway because I'm a cheap ba$tard, unless someone can recommend a
new, amazingly good product that is available for, say, $300 or less.

nate