Every uninteruptible power supply I've ever purchased has burned out after only a couple of years. What experience(s) have others had? Is it cost effective to replace the battery or does the shipping cost outweigh the benefit? My observation is that they're not often used in corporate environment,...at least not for anything smaller than a server. Beauty of the high sierra, and she's looking out for you.

Our servers use 1400VA APC's and we've got some smaller ones on a few workstations -- 8 or 10 650-700's, all APC. One died and APC replaced it immediately. We've had to replace batteries on two of them. Overall, we haven't had any bad experiences.

It's been my experience APC makes pretty much the best in the business. I've worked with most types from the smallest to the 1400, 3000, and even the 5000 series'. I've had to replace a few after they protected systems from lightening strikes on power lines. Replaced a few batteries, but other than that, I've yet to see one "burn out".

Unfortunately the batteries do die after 3 to 5 years. I've seen them (the UPS) die because they were slightly overloaded and got too hot. The batteries are a bit heavy to ship. Try to find them locally. The same batteries are used in emergency lighting and burgular alarm systems. I even saw them once at Home Depot. They are highly overpriced for the capacity. I have a UPS for my VCR's to keep time and settings.

I can't deny that I've overloaded mine pretty consistently. What I'm hearing is that, if I've calculated the VA's carefully, that shouldn't happen. Thank you. Beauty of the high sierra, and she's looking out for you.

If you ever looked at the heat sinks in some of the newer UPS, its a wonder that they even last 10 minutes. Notice that many of the smaller UPS's (those under 300 va) don't even have adequate cooling vents. If you are in a locality when there is frequent power outages especially brownouts, I would derate the va's by 30 to 50 percent. Also I've had an APC that killed the battery by having a slight overcharge (one of the batteries split after about 3 years). Probably the best setup would be under software control. Just save the data and shutdown. And no automatic restart.

Radio Shack has the 12volt 7AH gel type battery for $15.00. Might have to order it but only takes a couple of days. Not having a UPS is like going online with out virus protection. Not a good idea... I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid...