"BillW50" wrote in message ...
In ,
philo wrote:
On 04/24/2012 11:05 AM, BillW50 wrote:
I was a huge fan of uninterruptible power supplies since the
beginning (even for laptop use). Besides the computer, you can power
lots of other things. A small lamp, cordless phones, DSL modem,
alarm clock, etc. All great of course. And I have gone through a
number of UPS over the years. Generally the battery fails after 3 to
5 years. And the batteries generally run in the 25 to 35 buck range
and they are heavy to pay for shipping. And if you wait for a sale
on UPS, you could get one for about the same price as getting a new
battery for an old one. So just get a new one.

Well my CyberPower 685AVR UPS battery just died recently. I tried to
disassemble it and all of the parts fit into slots between the two
halves. And trying to take it apart, some are staying in one half and
some in the other half. To get it apart, all of it has to stay in one
half. But not as easy as it seems. And I have better things to do
then to fiddle with this thing all day.

I checked online and I thought I only paid about 50 bucks for this
one on sale. But nothing comes close to this one under 100 bucks.
Sure I could afford it, but that isn't the point. Why do I need one
again? Being a fan of laptops since my first one back in '84, I am also a
big fan of leaving the battery out (especially Li-Ion batteries). As
the heat and repeated charging only shortens the life of the battery
even far more than just throwing the battery in a drawer and just
using it when you really need portable power.

This all made a lot of sense to me all of these years. Although I now
have five netbook batteries for three notebooks. Nine Gateway
batteries for nine Gateway machines. And five Alienware batteries
for five Alienware machines. That is 19 batteries of only three
different battery types. And I have plenty of them nowadays. And
only like three of them have less than 95% of their rated capacity.
Plus chemically, they will become paperweights in about 10 years
anyway no matter how well you take care of them.

So I figure why not use some of them as an UPS instead? So what if
one wears out in two or three years? I can't possibly wear them all
out before they all will be so old to be any good anyway.

You really need to get a good quality UPS if you want it to last.
I have four commercial grade UPS's and they have been working
trouble-free for years...but you are right concerning the batteries.
The small gel-cells rarely last more than 4 or 5 years...

I do like UPS, so don't get me wrong. But if one is running laptops/netbooks and has plenty of spare batteries for the
machines anyway... an UPS seems somewhat pointless for them anyway.


The power supply part of it may be worthless (in essence) on a laptop, but the surge protection is nice to have. I'd
rather replace a cheap (by comparison) UPS after a large surge than try to find parts to fix a laptop's power circuit,
especially the ones that don't have the external brick.

I have a CyberPower 800AVR that I replaced the battery a couple of years ago. IIRC, the trick to getting the two halves
apart was to unplug the cables that linked each half, change the battery, then plug the cables back while working the
halves back together. I kinda recall it took a lot longer than the APC's and TrippLite's we had at work.
--
SC Tom