Back-UPS garbage? (was: Quick survey -- UPSs on slave nodes?)

[Drew Raines]

Mark Hahn <hahn at physics.mcmaster.ca> writes:

> their low-end UPSs are low-end in performance and robustness, but
> can certainly be expected to keep real machines up for their
> rated minutes.  obviously a 450VA is not going to keep a power
> workstation up for long, but you've gotten what you paid for.

No, I didn't get what I paid for.  I paid for it to keep a
low-budget PC up for a minute during an outage so I could either
reboot the machine, or let the power come back to life.

The box gave me the impression that said unit would do this for 17
minutes.  I got 2-3 seconds.

-Drew