Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Today, I came home and found my Staples delivery waiting by my front door. It was the APC Back-UPS ES Series 550VA UPS (BE550R), along with 3 cases of water (which I had added to pad the order to be over $50).

But, when I came in...things were strangely quiet, or rather I was hearing sounds that I wasn't accustom to hearing. My main computer wasn't on....its UPS, a Belkin F6C1500-TW-RK, was off with a red light. Strange.... I wouldn't expect this UPS to be down. Sure its out of warranty now, but I had replaced its battery back in August.

I restarted the UPS and waited for everything to be working again, etc. And, then I triggered a 10-second self-test. Wham....it went down instantly. Guess the UPS is bad and needs to be replaced.

Of course, now the President's Day sale is over....and that 1500VA UPS that I was on the fence on getting....that was $30 off and free shipping. Wasn't on sale now. So, I went looking around on line to see what UPS I could get quickly, of sufficient VA's. The load meter on the Belkin is around 33%, so the replacement I got didn't have to be the full 1500VAs. Though it was still preferable.

At first I looked at Amazon.com, but Amazon Prime was only going to get me free ground shipping on the UPS. And, they put ETA at Feb 25th. I didn't really want to wait that long....so it occurred to me that I should check Staples again.

Amazon.com had a 1500VA UPS for under $200, while with Staples I would be looking at 1285/1300 VA UPS for under $200. And, while the Amazon.com one would be APC, and the Staples would be CyberPower. I opted to get a 1285VA Cyberpower from Staples, since they said I could get it on February 20th.

And, just as I was about to finalize the order, I remembered that I had a $10 off >$100 coupon that I looked at using on Monday...but didn't think of what I had that much to use it on....but now I did. So, now I'm waiting for a Cyberpower 1285VA UPS to appear.

Haven't decided when I'll put the 550VA UPS into service. The thing I want to put on it, isn't in place yet and I don't feel like dealing with that right now.