Should I go for a new UPS?

[ajayritik]

Friends I have an UPS which isnt working any more. I guess the batteries are gone. Now if I replace the batteries that would cost me around Rs 600. Do you think its a better idea to buy a new UPS. I enquired about the prices. Microtek costs Rs 1600 APC costs Rs 2500. What do you all suggest? What would be the best brand or type of UPS that I should go for if at all I intend to buy a new one?

 

[desiibond]

Only APC for UPS and nothing else.

how old is your current UPS.

 

[ajayritik]

I purchased the current UPS when I purchased my old PC way back in 2002. If I have the batteries replaced this time. It will be the third time I will be doing it. Even I found out that APC is good for UPS but I think price is a little higher but seriously I think its better to go for this rather than local brands which come around 1k+ I didnt have that good experience with these local brands. When I had purchased this UPS earlier I was running short of money hence I had to buy this local brand. One more strange thing I observed with my current UPS is that if I switch it off it still supplies power to the PC. It's ON/OFF button works only when there is no power when we need to keep it on however when there is power it doesnt matter even if you turn off the switch of UPS. Is this strange? My friend has a UPS however it will supply power to the PC only if its turned on otherwise no power supply to the PC. Please give some input on the same.

 

[desiibond]

in that case, change it and go for APC.

 

[ajayritik]

Come on Guys! I know most of you may have UPS with you. Please give me some suggestions!

 

[dOm1naTOr]

No matter what UPS u have, there wud be battery fails in 1~1.5yr. The main advantage of APC is reliability. It gives clean power, ie it cuts most of fluctuations nd can withstand high voltage[upto 400V] surges etc. And also the circuits may be lio more efficient.

And as u said, there is another problem associated with ur current UPS, u shud consider new ones. Most local UPS will have many circuitry fails frequently, so better get APC, at least the circuits will remain in tact.

 

[ajayritik]

From whatever I heard about APC. Looks like it's a good product but the price is a little high. I once again checked the prices. I came across Umax which costs Rs 1650 with 2 yrs warranty for both battery and UPS. Microtek Costs Rs 1450 with 2 year warranty on only the UPS and for the battery 1 year. APC has 3 year warranty which includes battery as well as the UPS itself its price is Rs 2650.

 

[debaisaindian]

dude.....go for APC.....n put ur old UPS in junkyard

 

[hansraj]

hey man ..... dont throw it in junk yard . Iam planning to have a ups just like u have for my car so that i have 230 V always in my car. Nice idea isnt it!! If u think that this idea is good for u too then please do that or else take some pain and iam ready to bear the financial burden... please courier me that stuff without the battery. At least someone will be benefitted even with that one which u think is junk now.

 

[ajayritik]

hansraj I'm not sure whether this piece of equipment is going to be really useful. Anyways if at all I'm planning to buy a new one I will let you know.

 

[hansraj]

fine ..... let me know what u plan to do finally

 

[ajayritik]

What is the thing that I should look for when I buy an UPS? The other day my friend was telling something about 7000kVA. Can anybody help me on that?

 

[hansraj]

7000 kVA !!!!! that would give u a back up for roughly 7000X1000X10/2 mins!!! which is 67 Years!!!!! which incidently is not possible. check it out , it should not be more than 7000 VA or 7 KVA if at all. Anyway why do u want to go for anything more than 1 kva which will be good enough for home use and a backup for about 30 mins-45 mins(rough estimate). increasing the kva will only increase backup time but more increase will be towards the cost factor vis a vis the use.

 

[ajayritik]

Hansraj which city are you from? Well this time around I want to go for a good one. When I enquired in couple of shops and they told me about just three brands/models and all they had to tell was that it would give me max 10 mins backup and the difference in the price is only due to the brand name! I tried to Google also to find out about the things that we need to look for when we buy and UPS but didn't get much information about it. Friends please do pour in your suggestions!

 

[hansraj]

i am in chandigarh... i have a ups which is 5 years old and i bought it from sp road, bangalore. Its "celebra", some local brand. But it has worked fine so far and only the battery backup has reduced to 2 mins now. but it has a good feature of connecting to cpu via com port. and in the event of power failure it can switch off the pc or execute a command as programmed with editable timings. So why dont u find some similar kind of ups which gives u more than the backup time. and i dont find any reason why u should go for any model more than 500va unless u have very frequent power failure in ur region or u want to run other heavy peripherals(such as laserjet printer).

 

[ajayritik]

Hansraj tu ne to meri mooh ki baat cheen le. Even I was looking for an UPS with a feature which will enable it to automatically turn of the PC in case of power failure. I will try to enquire about it further! The problem here is that most of the shop keepers here don't know much about the things that they keep so I have to get info from friends etc.

 

[ajayritik]

Friends please give me suggestions. There are just couple of you who have given me your inputs. I'm waiting for more suggestions from you all. Is it worth Spending Rs 2500 on UPS of APC or should I go for Umax or Microtek which costs Rs 1650, Rs 1450 respectively. Please help!

 

[phreak0ut]

@ajay-I got my battery changed recently and the UPS service center guy told met that I've got a very good model of APC; Back-UPS AVR 500(that model is not available now) Whatever it is, don't EVER settle for anything lower than APC. It's worth every bit. You have already mentioned that there is power supply even when you switch off the UPS, that's not good at all. Buying cheap UPS means, there are fair chances of burning your PC and even get electrical shock.

 

[ajayritik]

Thanks for the info dude! Yeah most of them suggested APC but its the price that I'm worried about. Its more 1k than the others available in the market. Some of my friends suggested that most of the UPS's will work for max 2 yrs so it really doesnt matter if you go for APC. I'm in a fix. Its not even like we have other options apart from APC which are good or near to APC in terms of quality.

 

[phreak0ut]

I can understand your concern of price, if you get a bad UPS and burn your PC, which will be costly? Your PC replacement or a replacement of a battery in a good UPS? Yeah, crappy UPS works for just 2 years, then you have to junk it. Try to get the best you can afford in APC. The UPS dealer(he's our family friend) also told me that there are few fake APC UPSs out there. Make sure you get it from the right dealer.