I am surprised there are no reviews on UPS's here. Since this "IS" the
most important component of a computer system in India. Having a bad
UPS or none is very very bad... A power failure during a critical
moment can destroy hardware and is almost guaranteed to destroy not
only the data you were working on but others as well. I have had
numerous UPS's since I need my PC up and running all the time and the
power goes off when you least expect it. One of the main problems with
a PC is when you turn on the monitor, it draws a lot of power to
degauss the screen and that causes an over load on the UPS, sometimes
even with the mains ON.
But it definitely will shut down the UPS
overload circuit if you turn the monitor on when the mains power is
off. But once the monitor is ON, you can shut off the mains the UPS
will supply the power or turn on the computer and it will work fine. To
solve this problem I thought getting a 1KV UPS might be the ticket.
Especially considering that the monitor takes as much power as the PC
itself and I dont need the monitor on all the time, it would keep
running longer on batteries if I turn off the monitor when I dont need
it. So after using my PowerCom 650VA IND for less than an year I
decided to upgrade. I was happy with the 650IND since it worked at
140Volts.
So most of the time it never went on batteries. But one of
the inverter power chips blew out one day and I am very reluctant to
get it repaired, they only replace the blown chip, but with a circuit,
just 1 chip does not go bad, the other chips might work but they will
have already been on their death beds. Seeing how I need a reliable
power supply, I decided to go for a 1KV model and PowerCom worked until
140V unlike many others that stopped around 180Volts. The problem
started almost immediately... Seeing how this as a 1KV model and my PC
took only 400 VA, I decided to hook my TV and stereo to it. Connecting
my TV to it and turn on the the switch, the TV worked... Connected the
PC and decided there as nothing on TV, turned off the TV and I heard a
crackle.. But turned on the PC and it came up fine... Later tried to
turn on the TV and it would not turn on. Now how to get my TV repaired.
The thing weigh like 60 KG's. Thank fully, it was still under warranty
and they said they would send someone over to fix it. Decided okay the
UPS wont work with the TV.. And it worked happy with the PC... Except
there was one problem.. The UPS was not designed to work with
240Volts... It was designed to work with 220 Volts... Every time the
voltage went to 249 volts it would turn on he over voltage step down
and drop it to 200 volts.. Which means most of the time... Stepping it
down like this means bigger electricity bills... Not much for a single
PC but if you had an office for which this was designed and advertised
for, having 100 computers running like this means a 10-20% increase in
electric bills. For me this was great since I had problems of under
voltage and instead of it working until 140V, it was great that it
worked until 120Volts... I dont think many of us have to worry about
over voltage except in the early mornings and not that much either.
After using it about a month one day I lost power completely...
It
switched to backup and after 10 minutes the power came on and my PC
turned off... Smoke started coming out of the UPS.. At the very same
time I also had another UPS running the PC monitor as well as 2
inverters running in the house and another smaller UPS hooked to the TV
which this UPS had blown up before and none of the others had any
problems. Took the thing back to the shop and they looked at me like,
wow you carried this HEAVY ups here? Why didn't you call their service
cause this had on site same day service. I said well you didn't tell me
about it. But I dont use repaired UPS's so I decided to buy another one
anyway.
I decided destroying my brand new TV and blowing up was
enough... But this will be ready by tomorrow right? Having on site same
day service.. They took my number and stuff... etc etc etc... The new
UPS was a numeric 650VA.. Suspiciously similar to the old PowerCom
650VA I had earlier.. But dont know if its the same, just re branded or
not... Anyway, wait next day...next week... 2 weeks... And went into
the shop and they said the UPS was ready.. They got it repaired... Now
remember, this is a 1KV business class UPS with same day on site
service... Well I was happy with the numeric sort off but it had JAVA
monitoring software that takes over 100 megs of RAM to run... So
decided to use the PowerCom 1000 again...
