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APC Recalls 2.1 Million UPS Units
Controlio writes "Check your cubicles. APC has recalled two of its Back-UPS CS models, the Back-UPS CS 350 and Back-UPS CS 500, in both the 120 volt and 230-volt flavors. The units were sold between November of 2000 and December of 2002. The affected units have the potential to overheat, melting the outer casing and causing a potential fire hazard. Yikes."
Having a ton of equipment in my house, I had on occasion wondered if something like that could happen. A couple months back I had a netgear hub start acting whacky, later that day I heard a loud crack which at first I thought was a gunshot.
It turns out it was the powersupply exploding. The plastic top blew off hard enough to make a mark in the ceiling. Examaning the supply, it looks like it was a tiny chip in the adapter. Part of it was not melted so much as cauliflower looking like a silicon STD. Perhaps they were made by Innova?
This was only my second experience of something frying in all my years of computing but I do wonder what the actual rates of this type of failures.
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-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
What is the shipping charge for weight of 2.1 million UPS units? Both directions...
Yikes...
'Was checking their press announcement and found this quote: "APC recommends that the user immediately remove the UPS unit from service by turning off all connected equipment, turning the UPS unit off, and then unplugging the unit from the electrical outlet." Umm... really, if you own a UPS and you need that information, you shouldn't own a computer, let alone an UPS.
Try to get the protocol information for one of their USB models. You can't. They may have been open about their models in the past, but not anymore.
-- Will program for bandwidth
BTW the need for both phone and ethernet surge protection is because I'll be using phone lines as a backup for data syncs, if my client's network is down, or if they don't have a network.
The dual surge protection requirement is one of the less serious requirements--you can always buy an additional phone line/ethernet surge protection wall-wart type of thing to cover for one or the other not being there--but it's kind of ugly.
However, the big thing for me is to make sure the UPS behavior actually really does work correctly. For instance, if the UPS looses power and goes battery-low, and the system shuts down but the power comes back on during the shutdown process, the UPS had better still cut power for a short while, so the machines have an actual powerloss and then poweron to start them up again. Not every ups and software combination does this correctly all the time.
Expect 8 to change to thousands now that the light is on this. I lost everything I own (house, pet, office, belongings) to that poorly designed plastic UPS only a few months ago. I'm sure the company would love to have you believe that only 8 have torched. Just count how many reports are on Slashdot today.