The Ultra Products Power Protection Unit arrived at my door in one of the heaviest carton I have ever had to lift for a review sample, but when you're dealing with battery backup units the heavier the better.   There is no doubt who the maker of this product is, Ultra has placed their name boldly across the top of the box and you will notice two little dot whack stickers at the end of the word ULTRA, pay special attention to these since they are very important.

The first one is Ultra's $125,000 protection policy which basically says that Ultra will repair or replace, at its option, any equipment that is damaged by transient voltage while properly connected through the an ULTRA UPS.  The second is Ultra's 3-Year Limited Warranty. It should be noted that APC, perhaps the largest UPS maker in the world only has a 2-year warranty.

Also located on the front panel of the carton you will find an extensive list of features which we posted on the second page of the review.  Looking at the end panel of the carton you get a look at the business end of the Ultra-Power UPS which we will describe in more detail later on in the review.

To give you and idea of how well packaged the Ultra-Power UPS was when it arrived we shot these pictures of it after lifting it out of the shipping carton.  There is not much of a way that this bad boy was going to be damaged unless it was ran over by a A1 Tank.  We will give Ultra a perfect 10 for packaging on this one.

Before we take a look at the ULTRA- Power Protection Unit we should discuss exactly what the purpose of a UPS is.  There are basically five different things that a UPS will try to either correct or repair and those are as follows:

1. Black-out - This is a total loss of of your utility supply voltage to your outlet caused by either high demands on the power grid in your area, lightning strikes, construction or human error.  Any of the of these could lead to loose of data on your computer without a UPS installed and the worse case scenario would be the loss of the allocation table resulting in the loss of a hard drive.
    

2. Sags - short-term loss of voltage which can lead to your system locking up and not being able to save your work.
    

3. Surge - A surge goes the opposite direction of a sag and can be far more damaging if the voltage is to great.  Most components in a computer are only designed to run only a fraction above their regular operating voltage, so if a power surge happens and your line is not protected you run the risk of damaging some sensitive components.
    

4. Spike - This is a term that is often times confused with a surge, yet it is entirely different.  A spike is an instantaneous dramatic rise in voltage often caused by damage to power lines or lightning strikes.  These are the ones that will play havoc with your motherboard of NIC cards.
    

5. Noise - When EMI or RFI (Electro-magnetic interference or radio frequency interference) are introduced into your power line this can lead to data errors due the computer being able to understand the exact commands being sent to it.

Each letter on the graph corresponds with five typical types of power problems