In my experience, if not monitoring batteries, expect 3 years of service. If you monitor it, you can get rid of it when it is measured as being below specs.
Yes, electronics in them go bad occasionally. Especially the 'computer capacitors' wear out from age more than use. At times other things wear out but that is rare. I did have some small UPS that met a tragic end, but they did protect the equipment (and the batteries were still good) even after a close lightening strike (about 400 ft away). I opened the bad ups, and components were fried. Only about half of the MOVs were un-scorched, but the batteries and the inverter side of the unit worked till the batteries died. These were small (about 750+ VA) APCC BackUPs Pro's that died. But they did what we asked. Our power is still 'iffy', brownouts or surges 2 to 4x/month on the average. I do monitor all the UPS I can (if they have computers attached) but just plan on replacing UPS about every 6 years and batteries every 3 (half the UPS life) for UPS I put on our TV/DVD Players, etc. Power where I am is supplied to a local power co-op by the TVA. We are in a more rural than sub-urban setting. Enjoy. _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list Hardwarehacking@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
