On Thursday 27 March 2008 10:12:14 am Roger Heflin wrote: > Some of the UPS self-tests are good enough to catch the batteries > going bad and warn you, and some of them are not, the way you > learn about it is when it fails to work. Yes, there are lower-bounds to battery life which are quite variable. My point was that the upper-bounds are fixed. These are limited by the technology used. And after 5 years of battery usage, the UPS's ought to be giving a signal that the battery must be replaced. I can't tell you how many UPS's I've seen that are supposedly good, but have 5+ year old batteries in them. People are honestly surprised that they don't work, as there's no indication that something is wrong. You don't need to run a self-test or wait until it fails after that time period. But before then, I would agree with you. -dwight-