Sidney

Something as beautiful as my original DIY UPS would, of course, be cheap at any price, but the thing itself didn't cost me much. I had almost all of the bits sitting around already, and a local battery place gave me the slightly used fancy battery.

This knowledge, of course, doesn't help someone who'd like to build something like that for themselves. But that piece is five years old, now; the build-from-scratch price today would be cheaper than it was then. And, because proper UPSes (or SPSes, anyway) are now also cheaper than they used to be, there are some good options out there for happy hackers who'd like to get a good standby power solution together on the cheap.

__________________
lazyman

Opteron 165 (2) @2.85 1.42 vcore AMD Stock HSF + Chill Vent II