true sine wave?
I have had almost all electronics in my home on sine wave ups for over a decade now. I started with used APC smartups, though past 9 or 10 years been using cyberpower. I have no complaints about the UPSs themselves. The good ones aren't cheap two of mine were at least 400 bucks a pop i think maybe over 500. My first big cyberpower I had a battery extension pack on it for more runtime(maybe 800 bucks total). I ended up frying it when I hooked up the 3rd party replacement batteries in the wrong sequence(fortunately I got 5 years of service out of it, no damage to equipment other than ups). The newer unit I bought to replace it works fine though the fan is really loud. Both are/were double conversion systems but the previous model the fan only kicked in when on battery. My 2nd newer UPS I opted for a non double conversion but still sine wave, silent when not on battery.
As for text alerts my upss have had lcd screens for years, even a baby cyberpower for my bedroom entertainment system. I like how i can see the power usage in watts on even the baby ups. Put a bigger battery in it after 3 or 4 years (didn't fry that one only one battery vs 9 in the one i fried). Works great.
Non sine wave is fine for most computers. Some of my earlier cyberpower upss and computers back in early 00s had some issues. The power supply in the computers would tend to jump from 110v mode to 220v mode when the ups kicked in. Workaround for that was to order the power supplies hard set to 110v (pc power and cooling). Had one power outage which blew a fuse in my stereo at the time and eventually blew the ups (batteries leaking and all). Fortunately no damage other than the ups itself.
I've been using small upss on my personal computers since 1996. My first real IT job in 2000 I deployed tons of APC rackmount smartups and battery packs. I didn't read or know about the UPS rant myself but maybe most of it comes down to the guy wanting a dirt cheap solution.
When I first heard about this topic I thought they were wanting to make high end UPSs (e.g. tens of thousands of watts). Then I see the 300W comment and realized it's for toy workloads.
For ups software mostly I use network ups tools (NUT) for the past 18 or so years. Also used APCs network ups software too especially back in the early days when I had things like hpux and solaris and aix along with linux.
Kinda funny UPS story. I equipped my org at the time (18 yrs ago ) with tons of upss. Enough runtime for 1 or 2 hrs.
Then one sunday morning my phone went off. Power outage and batteries were kicking in. I felt good for maybe 10 seconds. Then I realized the AC was off too. So i rushed to the office 2 miles away to force quicker shutdowns. No issues. Fortunately nothing mission critical.
Since 2003 anything important has gone to a colo so haven't dealt with UPSs outside of my home since.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
