Nobody likes being without their beloved PCs. I know I don't. That's why some insane people buy Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPSs).

Now, don't get me wrong, they're awesome. But having purchased one last year, the power has gone out precisely... twice! Once at 3AM when all my gear was off, and thus a loud series of 'BEEP!'s woke me up for no reason, and the other was so short it tripped out my crappy PCs with crappy power supplies, but left my beast untouched and powered on. As such, I have come to realise, I don't really have a use for such a piece of equipment.

However, I digress.

Regardless of whether you actually have a practical use for a UPS or not, the 5110 is a great unit. It comes in a few models, ranging from 350VA to 1500VA* (210W to 900W). While the lower end will only power smaller PCs, the 1000VA or 1500VA will power pretty much any PC you throw at it, and quite probably your monitors and other perhiperals too **

The 5110 is a line interactive UPS, meaning that while the UPS mains outlet will be physically connected to the mains inlet, it is still filtered (ie kept close to optimal wave form, removes spikes/brownouts, etc) and battery backed up. In the case of a brown out, it will not switch completley to battery, instead taking what energy it can from the mains inlet, and making up the rest with battery power. While it is not as good as a fully online UPS, it is a lot cheaper, and for the purposes of all but the most high end enterprise users, will suffice quite nicely.

When running on battery backup power, the wave form is a modified sine wave. This is fine for most equipment. Switch mode power supplies (of which your PC and most perhiperals will use) will not notice a difference between the pure sinewave from the power point and the modified sine wave from the UPS. Running highly sensitive medical or timing equipment off a modified sine wave would not be recommended, but for anything else, it is merely a moot point, and another line on the technical specifications sheet.

The unit itself is heavy (12kg), as you should expect with two Sealed Lead Acid (SLA) batteries. Off the top of my head, I believe they are 7.5AH SLA batteries, but the technical spec page does not list it, and I don't want to check my UPS while it is on. Because I'd have to turn it off. And that would mean this PC dies. D= It's exterior is all black, with 3 battery backed up and 3 surge protection only outlets on the rear and a power button on the front. Below the power button exists three status lights. From left to right, "Battery backup", a "WARNING!" light and a "Oh hai I have mains power lol!" light. It is a very simple unit.

Moving away from what the unit actually is to my experiences with it, we come to problems I've had with it. At one stage I had [very] occasional power offs, where everything would lose power, and I would have to power cycle the UPS. After a warranty replacement and experiencing the same problem, I narrowed it down to it didn't like being behind an overclocked PC and a 9800GX2. Go figure. Since moving it out from under my desk in to an open area, it has performed flawlessly.

I lied above. The power has actually gone out four times. The third time was when the bushfires cut a main power line from NSW to Vic, and thus rolling blackouts followed and the fourth was when I took my PC in the back of my car at a LAN to try and find a wireless access point to log on to my main steam account to save having to go home to the internet. It's battery run times seem to be well above what the technical specifications state, however that could just be that it's a new unit and the sepcs are stated as an average over it's life span.

The software included with it is horrible. It gives you basic stats, such as load (both in amps and a percentage of total capacity), input and output voltage, number of power failures and recommended date of battery replacement (it kept telling me I should replace it around the start of 1970. I chose to ignore it's warnings and just let them go until they die). There is also settings to send email alerts when the power goes out, and to shut equipment down a certain time after power failure, however as there is no "battery remaining" figure, you can only specify when this should happen in a "minutes since power lots", instead of "when battery is at <x>%, shut down" figure. I have since uninstalled the software, as it has no real purpose for me, except as an indication of how much power I'm using (and since upgrading my PC earlier this year, I don't want to know).

I mentioned above I returned the unit for warranty. This leads me on to the next point.
PowerWare's support is excellent. I have had a few questions for them over the period of using this product. Some have been completely against what the UPS should be used for (eg, "Can I take the batteries out, hook up a 24V power supply on a tram in place of the batteries, and use it as an inverter for a small DJ set up?", and others have been perfectly reasonable (eg "It's powering off. Can I get an RMA, please?". All of the questions have been answered with reasonable and honest answers (Unfortunately the tram thing had problems. The inverter is only designed to cope with short term loads without overheating, and as such as a 1 hour cutout in it when running off batteries. This will never happen in real life, so is not a problem). Warranty returns were quick and efficient, and operated just as expected.


So, for those who just go "TL;DR!", here's a summary:
Pros:
-Cheap, but still good. Static Ice has it's price starting at $216.
-Good battery run times.
-Simple to use.
-Annoying beeping noises can be turned off using the software
Neither pro nor con:
-Modified Sine wave output when on battery backup. Not an offline UPS (yay!), but on the flip side not a fully online one either.
-Heavy (As above, you have to expect that when you have two 7.5AH SLA batteries and a 1000VA/600W inverter)
Cons:
-Crap software. But you don't need software to use the UPS. just plug it in...

Get if you...
-Aren't really a tightarse, but don't have lots of money and would like/need some form of UPS solution
-Want bonus geek cred, or want another shiny black box to sit around your PC
-Go to lots of LANs with admins who can't be bothered setting up the power properly
-Live in rural areas where brownouts are a common problem.

Overall rating:
9+4i*** out of 10.

More information can be obtained here

* For those who don't have a degree in electrical engineering (or similar), VA is short for Volt-Amperes. It is very similar to Watts (W), but they are not the same. VA is for AC, and W is for DC. While for the common resistive circuit, they are the same, once you start adding inductance and capacitance in to the circuits, they differ. You can find out a little more here


** For instance, I can safely run the following off my 1000VA UPS without it screaming due to overloading issues:
- Main PC (q6700, 9800GX2, four hard drives, 6500GS secondary GPU, GA-EX38-DS4 mobo, 8GB DDR2 1066)
- Spare PC (Athlon XP 2600+, 1.5GB DDR 400, 1 hard drive)
- 2 x 22" ViewSonic monitors.
- Large stereo (not turned up loud, but that wont make too much of a difference)

It starts screaming when I plug the 19" CRT in and turn it on.


*** Sneaky reference to mathematics and imaginary numbers. If you want to understand the difference between VA and W (see point *), then an understanding of imaginary numbers is quite handy!