on 2-5-2009 4:41 AM Brent L. Bates spake the following:

 Personally, I find this UPS exploding paranoia rather ridiculous.  One

person has one UPS burst into flames and everyone is yelling the sky is falling. We have no idea what conditions the UPS had been subjected to and to then jump to the conclusion that all UPS's are bombs waiting to explode is just insane. We've been using UPS's for years and years and the worst we've had are batteries that got swollen to the point we had to use a crowbar to get them out of the UPS. We then replaced the battery and had years more use out of the UPS. We've purchased used UPS's at government auctions, replaced the batteries, and had years of service out of them. All our UPS's are APC. We have and have used a wide range of sizes, from 250VA to 3000VA, Backup's to SmartUp's. I've used/tried other brands, but haven't been as satisfied with them. APC isn't perfect, they've made some stupid mistakes, but I've been more satisfied with them than the others we've tried.

I have to admit that although I have had others blow something in the circuit boards before, this is the first to actually catch fire.

And those units are from the era of the bad capacitors right after Y2K.