Uptime [OT]

[David Brodbeck]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 4:00 PM, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> No power conditioning (implied by no UPS) is nothing to brag about.

If your utility power is very -- common now in places with buried
utilities -- a UPS of the non-enterprise variety can actually make
reliability *worse*.  I've found that standby-type UPSs (like the
popular APC BackUPS and SmartUPS units) will drop the load at the
slightest power blip once the batteries go bad, while machines
connected directly to utility power will often ride out short blips.
It's especially insidious on the BackUPS units because the only way to
test the battery is to hit the test button and see if the load drops.
;)

When I lived in a place that had a power outage once a week, I used a
UPS.  Now that I live in a place where I get maybe one power outage a
*year*, I'm better off without out.