I guess my hand me down old UPS is dead now. Surprise storms last night shut down my computer for me and this is twice now, my old UPS has let me down.

What to look for in a new one? Reputable brands? Sadly, lost some stuff I was working on before going to bed last night.

The Save button is your friend.

We use APC at work. Well worth it.

Yep the APC line is good. Get at least one that will give you 10 minutes of power so you can get things shutdown if the power goes out. Something rated at 450volt amps will work. Higher ratings will give you longer to run and then get things shutdown. PC electronics hate sudden stops....

Have been looking at the APC's, yes, just not really wild about the lead acid batteries they put in them. With today's battery technologies, hard to understand why they are still used for this application. LiPo4 is a much more stable platform as is becoming a strong contender in so many things and the prices are coming down. I'd almost dare to say several of the bass boat peeps are using them for their electronics and trolling motors now. Even entire house back up systems use them. Seems you can get a 10yr battery life with the LiPo4 systems vs..??? with the lead acids. Mostly, I'm liking the display on the newer systems to give you a readout of what the status of the UPS is and how well the cells are handling things, if that makes sense.

And yes, auto save was on, but when it shut down the software, the laser machine lost it's home spot.

Work has been shut down for 3 days because of the rain we never got here in JoCo. All the storms were well off to the east of here as of last night. 4am, huge lightning and rains appeared. Go figure, we finally got the rain we were told we was gonna get 3.5 days later.

For what it's worth, here's the unit I'm looking at if anyone else might think it's time to upgrade theirs.

GoldenMate 1000va/800W Also available on Amazon. Best buy has several of the APC models in stock in the FW/d metromess.

APC is what we use at work. They have been through several storms out here. I also have an APC on my home theater system, which is where we have our network connected.

I'm on three plus years with the same battery.

I have an APC on my boat to sustain internet during power blips and short-term outages. No complaints.

Laptops have come along way. Ditch the desktop unless you are running a server.

You can run on battery till the power comes up or at least save

Just put a new battery in your old UPS. Or buy an APC.