I didn't bother getting a UPS, as I don't want to spend that kind of money (prices are ridiculous here in the UK) and I don't really need backup power, as we never really have power outages here in London. I am using an "APC Line R Power Conditioner". It's basically a UPS without the battery/backup power (protects against surges and brownouts).
To me, this is the absolute bare minimum. And anyone that buys one needs to pay attention to the surge suppresion values, as most UPS's (even the Online units), are short in this area (i.e. less than 500 Joules, when you should run 3k+ Joules). Seriously.
You can add a good surge suppressor between the wall and UPS (or auto transformer, which is what the Line R Power Conditioner really is). I realize the prices in the UK are terrible, but how valuable is your sytem to you?
It all comes down to how well a user understands the risks involved for their situation in order to answer this question. I'm accustomed to being able to get a sufficient UPS system for 10 - 15% of the system cost (usually refurbished in order to get a better unit that's better suited to protect the equipment), so that's like the cost of an acceptably priced extended warranty. Though I'm not as familiar with UK pricing, I know both the system and UPS are more expensive there, so the percentages may not be off that much.
Granted this is still more money (budgets tend not to be unlimited in the vast majority of cases), but is it ultimately worth it if your system (and potentially data, as such a failure can take out the backups as well) gets damaged or destroyed due to a power system fault?
BTW, the brownout protection offered by the Online type UPS's is better than an auto tranformer or Line Interactive UPS (also uses an auto transformer) can provide, as the Online units always runs off of the batteries + inverter (no output voltage variations that occur with switched taps on a transformer) to produce the output voltage without any transients passing through to the system (i.e. noise from switching or any EMI/RFI that may get past/picked up after the filters).
Yes, it's expensive, but it comes down to how valuable the system and data is to the user (sucks to have $5000USD in hardware blow because of inadequate protection, and the data may be price-less).
Just something to consider in the future, and may help others.
BTW, Eaton makes good products, and more common in the UK as I understand it. Not sure about Tripp Lite's availability, though I know they make units for the UK.
When shopping for a UPS, also realize that not all UPS units are created equal. Double-conversion/online type UPS units are the best types, but the most expensive. If an online type is out of your budget, look at a line-interactive model as a bare minimum. I would avoid cheap offline/standby types because they don't stand up very well to brownouts and generally lack the battery capacity to keep a typical workstation properly powered, making them not much better than a normal surge suppressor.
Absolutely.
APC and Tripplite are both good UPS manufacturers.
So is Eaton. I'm less sure about Cyberpower's products though, as I've never had access to thier better units (not all that common yet from what I've seen).
