UPS vs. Tripp Lites or Furman power conditioners

Mine died a while ago too. I opened the unit up, and googled UPS replacement batteries.. It has half the price.. And it works like a charm

If there's something wrong with your existing unit other than simply needing a battery replacement, I suggest getting the SUA1500. Pure sine wave output, very reliable, minimal hum from the unit. I have two. The only drag (if you want to even call it that) is the very occasional self-testing , but hey, it's a small price for not losing your data in the event of a power interruption or line voltage weirdness.

There is simply no comparison between a UPS and the Furman and Tripp Lite units you mentioned (they only provide line filtering and voltage regulation). Night and day. Apples and oranges. Kumquats and rutabagas. Trust me, there is no such thing as too-high-a-price when it comes to saving your data (and potentially your *** if you're working for a client) in the event of a power outage or line voltage anomaly. They happen in the country, they happen in the city.

Have I made myself perfectly clear?
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Or if the battery in your existing unit is the only problem and the unit has enough battery capacity for you, just get a replacement battery. End of story.

But if you decide to upgrade to the SU1500, stay away from the rackmount versions. They're EXTREMELY noisy. Get the tower.

I had never heard of this before (power interruptions are very rare in this city, I have had only two or three in twenty years). From my brief googling, do I understand correctly that these units will keep feeding the Mac for a few minutes, providing time for saving and shutdown?

Hello

I'm currently working in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where I sometimes get more than ten power shortages a day and the AC can be anywhere between almost zero (bulbs turning dark orange when lit) and 250 V, sometimes a bit more... I never used a power regulator because first they all end up blowing up after a few months (only chinese models are available here) and also because I thought that my MacBook Pro's power block acted as a kind of a regulator by itself, being designed to work between 100 and 240 V. Same with my pair of Genelecs 1030A, from 115 to 230V. Can anybody help me evaluate the risk I'm taking ? and advise me about what I should use ? the MacBook, FW powered FireFace400, USB powered hard disk and the genelecs are maybe 200w in total

Thanks

Erik, bwanakitoko, and trobert225, I'll try to answer you all in this post.

Bwana, the battery in the laptop will act as a UPS, but it doesn't act as a voltage regulator or spike suppressor as far as I'm aware. I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment on the rest of your situation, though it seems that your Genelecs should probably be on a UPS so that they don't go POP! when the power comes back on.

Erik, the point of a UPS (uninterruptable power supply), especially of the kind that we're discussing here, is to provide AC power at normal line voltage when the power goes out. It does this by charging an internal battery (sometimes multiple batteries, depending on the model you get) while you have power, and when the power goes out, the unit provides AC power derived from those batteries. UPS's come in all different sizes and "runtime" capacities determined by the size and number of batteries, among other things. So when the power goes out, how much time you can run your gear from the unit depends on its runtime capacity as well as how much power your gear draws. Here's an example:

My computer (PPC Quad 2.5), two computer monitors, powered speakers, keyboard controller, 6 external hard drives, interface, Euphonix control surface, DSL modem and two routers all connected to one SUA1500. When the power goes out I can run my gear for 20 - 30 minutes before the unit runs out of juice. What I will do to increase runtime is turn off selected pieces of gear, like my 2nd monitor and powered speakers (I'll work on headphones).

When the power goes out, the unit beeps loudly, a constant reminder to keep an eye on the LED meter to see how much juice is left in the battery. When it starts to run low, I quit my session and power down the hard drives. That's really important, because if the power were to go out while I'm writing to any of those drives, it could result in data loss or a head crash. The last thing I do before the unit runs out is shut down the computer and all other gear.

The other thing this unit does is provide overvoltage and undervoltage protection. So if the power dips to, say, 100 V, it'll make up the difference and provide 120V. It will also protect from line spikes. I've been able to run during severe thunderstorms where lightning is striking right by the house.

I live in upstate NY, where we have 3 - 4 power outages a year due to bad weather or some drunk yokel plowing their pickup into a utility pole. But even when I used to live in NYC, working in midtown Manhattan studios, come 5 in the morning the MTA would switch on extra voltage capacity to the NYC subway and inevitably either my gear or the SSL would freeze. So I got a UPS and powered my gear from that. And it was nice not to lose my work, even when the console would need to be rebooted.

Anyway, I think the main point of having a UPS is to give yourself enough time to save work and shut down when the power goes bad. And the other important point is to provide a stable voltage source for external hard drives during power anomalies. The ability to run for longer than 5 minutes is, I think, a luxury. But then again, it's really cool too.

trobert, regarding the pure sine wave, it's my understanding that power supplies run hotter when the AC waveform isn't a pure sine wave. And as far as the noise on that tower/rack unit, the one I had was extremely noisy due to the fan which was constantly blowing. But who knows, maybe I got a bad one...

Thanks!