Gonna Get a Battery

For years in my family, the catch phrase, and usually kinda sung to a melody, “Gonna get a battery!” was spoken.

Recently after some trials at home with a battery, I asked my mom, “Where did that come from?”

She told me that one time when they were living in Baltimore, a young boy, all excited, skipped down the street saying, “gonna get a battery!” and off he went and this stuck in our home, (likely my father’s doing). I guess that was a humorous sight to see.
I live in an electrically challenged home. Someone decides to put on the space heater and all manner of lights go out. Someone else dries their hair, and poof, we’re in the dark again.

Now, this as you can imagine, could make a PC dependent person like myself very nervous, except, I have a very nice APC back-up battery which left me 20 minutes of time before I ever had to shut down due to these kinds of issues. Come storm or someone hitting an electrical pole, my computer was safe.

That is, until recently. I kept getting messages that my battery was over 5 years old and it was time to replace it. The thought of spending a lot of money on a new one, and worried how does one actually get a new battery into that contraption, made me rather lazy to get right to the purchase.

However, even more challenges hit our house and the we seemed to never know when the next outage would strike. I finally went to APC’s page, and after some lengthy searches, found the correct battery for my model UPS. I ordered it and around 3 days later, it arrived to my home. This left my nerves a little rattled for three days, as one section of our house decided to quit working all together. This prompted me to rearrange my room/office, opting for an outlet that had been rather trustworthy in the past. My battery now said it had not 20 minutes till shut down, but rather only 3. Since it was less than 5 minutes on the battery time, it would immediately put the PC into hibernation. Which was kind of confusing when I would return to see the black screen without knowing why.

When the battery arrived, I was disappointed that directions were not clear, so I phoned APC with my question. No where did it say if it arrived fully charged or if I had to charge it. The response was quick and so I immendiately set out to charge the new battery for 16 hours.

The next day, after the delivery service came to pick up the old battery for proper disposal, and waiting for the full 16 hours charge time, I optimistically put in the new battery and plug everything into it, only to see the same problem. Only three minutes left.

I called APC and even though I am world traveled, have had many a foreigner into my home of all nationalities, I had trouble understanding the young lady trying to help me. I suppose APC outsources their technical support like everyone else. *sigh*

Well, in unplugging things as she told me to do, I accidently pulled the plug on the phone which ended our conversation. So I redialed to talk to another young lady, also hard to understand, but she had me run some tests. She even wanted me to pull the battery out and tell her the serial number. She decided after the tests it was defective. I looked near the serial number. MADE IN CHINA. *another sigh*

She reordered another battery, she said it would take about 5 days.

For 5 days, I lived on pins and needles as to the PC’s safety, and needless to say, electricians were called to investigate the issues the house was having.

About the same day all that was looked into and fixed, my second battery arrives. I re-charge it for the 16 hours, same problem. It doesn’t work, just like the other two. I phoned APC again. I talked to a young lady who told me to get a paper and pencil and then I had to write down a 16 step plan of what things I was going to have to do to the new battery. I was going to have to “drain it” and recharge it, and push buttons and all manner of things for the next 7 hours.

7 hours later, I replace the battery (again), no difference. By this time, I wasn’t surprised. She did tell me that perhaps they sent me and “old” battery, something that was beyond its shelf life of 5 months.
Now my logical mind is starting to kick in at this point.
The batteries seem to WORK. It’s the shut down time that has me concerned. I wanted my full 20 minutes. What runs the shut down? The SOFTWARE!

I decide to investigate if I have the latest version of my PowerChute software for my version of Windows. I didn’t.

I download it, install it.
Presto, I have 40 minutes it says of back up time.

So, hopefully, even if we’re down to candles and flashlights again, here in the house, my PC will still run for 40 minutes safely. 🙂

If you don’t have a battery back up for your computer, even though I went through a lot with mine, I have to say, you should have one. I looked it up on my software and it says that in the past 24 weeks, the unit helped my PC service 25 blackouts, and one ‘electrical noise’ issue.