Does price matter anymore?

somewhere I still have the 7" of 'meaningless songs'. A classic! If I recall, it had some kind of send up of 'you should be dancin' on the b side which was also good.

-b.

Not all! Not by any means!

Nope All of the APC SmartUpses can be used without line power and the older non smart ones that have a test button can be started without AC line power. You just have to hit the test button and turn the power on. I used one for this during all of the hurricanes here in Florida. I had it hooked up to 2 car batteries and it lasted a long time.. :-)

- Mike

On Mon, 15 May 2006 20:55:16 -0400, "mc" put finger to keyboard and composed:

Indeed. My father could die before any of his beloved 100+ polka LPs are re-released on CD. :-)

- Franc Zabkar

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Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Thanks, Mike - I'll go whip up that 12VDC power cord after all.

And btw, if it is the type that can't be started without line power, take some kind of a small alternator, which generates something near

120V, hook it up to the UPS - then just crank it running! Reported to be working :-)

Mike Berger spake thus:

When did they ever do that? My guess is never.

Maybe in some larger cities, yes. But certainly not out in the boonies.

I worked at the S.A. store in Flagstaff, Arizona in the 1980s. We repaired NOTHING. If it wasn't saleable coming in, it got shitcanned.

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A nation of sheep begets a government of wolves.

Depends on the disposable fees. In some cities, like a previous poster said, they'd be charged commercial disposal fees. In the nearby city of Moncton, NB, the commercial rates are about $75 / ton. So that averages about $3 - $5 a set, which adds up if they get several dozen duds dropped off every year (or month). Maybe if they started charging all consumers high disposal fees for TV's, more people would start getting their old sets fixed. Well, that or they'd just start dumping them in the woods..........

Our local Salvation Army and DAV stores now only accept TV's in working order. Not so sure about junk audio stuff.

Mark Z.

"Interstate Battery" has a halfway decent price, and I can have the distributor drop them off at a local tire shop that sells their car batteries if I prepay. They make a delivery once a week, so its almost as fast as mail order. I have seven here that need batteries but I only buy them as I need them. Also if you do a search for the battery number you might be surprised by the price of new batteries. Just make sure they have the right sized terminals. The APC units I've got all use the .250" Faston terminals, but some batteries come with the smaller 0.1875" Faston terminals and won't handle the higher current.

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My sig file can beat up your sig file!

You pay the CATV or Sat company to deliver the programming, and they have to pay for most of what they carry.

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My sig file can beat up your sig file!

"Travis Jordan" hath wroth:

I'm not sure which APC 300w UPS model you have, but batteries are cheap enough if you know where to look: |

However, I know what you mean. My favorite source of UPS's is the battery recycling pile at the local dump. People throw away the entire UPS rather than extract the batteries and seperate them between batteries and scrap steel. Also, the local Batteries Plus store had a fairly large pile of assorted UPS's with either dead or missing batteries. They offered me a deal, where if I would purchase the replacement batteries, they would give me the UPS. Unfortunately, their battery prices were only a little better than a new UPS (with a warranty), so I declined. I eventually ended up with three BackUPS

1400 UPS's without batteries. The remainder of the pile ended up in the recyclers steel scrap as nobody else wanted took the deal.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

The 12V 7AH battery for the APC BK300C is $22 delivered.

The replacement CYBERPOWER 485 VA UPS was $19.98 on sale at Staples, including Florida's 7% sales tax the total price was $21.38. Still a few cents cheaper, and a new, larger UPS to boot

Yep. If the battery distributiors (and their retailers) weren't so greedy they'd have a much bigger market and there would be less waste in this country. You'd think that someone would have figured that out by now.

Travis..... but batteries are heavy, so cost of shipping is a much larger factor than in other products. Regards Lee in Toronto

Inviato da X-Privat.Org - Registrazione gratuita

Um, the UPC that I just bought for $20 included one of those batteries.....and Staples shipped it for free (on my business account). If I wanted to buy just the battery at a local store I'd be paying $35 or more.

Price is price. Batteries go on sale, too, but for whatever reason they don't seem to be discounted as much as the devices that use them.

Gel cells expire in a few years because the electrolyte degrades over time... charged or not.

"Travis Jordan" hath wroth:

Agreed. Most consumers do not buy batteries over the counter. I would not expect retail stores to even stock replacements.

I've never seen an expiration date or "use before xx/2007" on any gel cells. I couldn't find any references to electrolyte degradation with age using Google. I did find the usual references to sulfidation in lead-acid cells caused by the crystallization of hard lead sulfate on the electrode surfaces when left discharged for long periods. This causes a general reduction in cell capacity followed by a possible shorted cell if allowed to persist. Is this what you're talking about? If so, pulse charging does a fairly decent job of preventing sulfidation. I could not find any claims that it's a problem with a charged battery, as I would expect to find in an operational UPS. Got any references? This is interesting.

Incidentally, I've done moderately well recovering sulfidated gel cells with a paint shaker. I strap the battery into the shaker and beat it up for about 5 minutes. I sometimes have to shake it in different orientations. The idea is to have the vibrations crack the hard lead sulfate from the surface of the plates and hopefully eventually fall to the bottom of the cell. The problem is that if the lump is sufficiently large, it can short the cell if it doesn't dislodge, sometimes resulting in a meltdown. Also, be sure to inspect the case carefully for cracks before proceeding as spraying acid around the shop is not a good idea.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558