Jim Cathey wrote:
Mine (APC Smart-UPS 2000) came from GSA. Some portion of $35, the lot price. (Another small UPS and a big old Ethernet hub came with.) The 75AH batteries (4, a 48V pack) I put on it were 10x that price!
After a lot of bad experiences with more cheaply-made units, APC is just about all I'll buy. (With one CyberPower unit I had more outages *caused* by the UPS than it prevented!)
If your SmartUPS is the rack-mount model where the batteries slide in single-file, I recommend running the PowerChute monitoring software and replacing the pack at the first sign that the internal temperature has gotten higher than usual. I had a SmartUPS 3000 that one day started running 30 degrees hotter than normal, with no change in the room temperature. The battery pack failed its next self-test, a few days later. Unfortunately, by that time the bad battery had swelled up and firmly wedged itself in place, and I had a really hard time getting it back out.
The smaller, desktop APC units are often discarded after the batteries go bad, even though the batteries are available at a reasonable price from a number of sources, including Batteries Plus and Mouser Electronics (www.mouser.com). Last time I needed a "new" UPS, I went to RePC and bought two APCs off the "as is" shelf for $2 each. I figured buying two would maximize my chances of getting a good one, but it turned out they both just needed batteries.
