Family HandymanReviews of familyhandyman.com

I have been an avid reader since the late 90's and always looked forward to the articles, plans and handy hints and then something changed. For the past year or so I've noticed changes to the magazine that wasn't my familiar friend and after thumbing through the current issue I figured it out. Out of the 18 people that make up the editorial staff 12 of them are women, now don't get me wrong I have no problems with women I'm actually married to one and there are some women out there who are great DIYers but you can tell the magazine is trying to get in touch with its feminine side. If you are trying to attract women to your magazine then keep up the work but I bet my bottom dollar men are jumping ship. Lets face it , The Family Handyman was a magazine geared to men, and now it is not. To keep the original name is doing a great disservice to all diy men everywhere. The Family Handyperson or Handywomen might be more suitable. It really is sad that it has come to this and I don't see it improving and if it keeps going the way it is going it will soon just be a memory. I guess I can always read my back issues.

Should change their name to the Family GirlyMan. Was a subscriber for 20 years. If I want to read about hiking boots, I can look elsewhere. Even the truck companies won't advertise here anymore. Go Woke, Go Broke.

I relied on information on their webpage re how long battery back up units will run a home wifi network. The site is labelled “family handyman” and doesn’t seem to have any of the standard ‘contact us’ links that I could find to contact the author about my issues with their test of battery back ups. I felt compelled to post something since the results were so outrageously off and I bought a unit based on their test results and the information regarding the underlying specs to base assumptions on the performance of similar products. It proved to be utterly useless! The author states: “UPS units are rated by volt-amps and watts, which is a power limit and a rough estimate of how long the battery will last…A 350-VA unit costs about $50 and should power a router for almost two hours, depending on the router’s wattage.” The three units they tested (Amazon Basics 600VA, APC 600VA, and Cyberpower 600VA) were 600VA and ran from 4 hours to 5.5 hours. So, I bought an APC 1,000VAC unit assuming by extension of the information provided that it should run my Xfinity gateway for far longer — employing simple math roughly 8+ hours. I set mine up according to the instructions in the user manual charging it initially for just over 12 hours in preparation for our planned 9 hour power outage. When our power went out I turned the backup on and the display indicated an initial runtime of 120 mins. It fluctuated quite a bit for approximated 10 minutes and settled on just over 2 hours. Two hours! After 15 minutes of operation 40% of the battery life was gone based on the display indicator. This is FAR from even what the600VA test units provided in the test reported on the website. At this point I don’t know if I have a defective BU or whether the test results and accompanying information in the handyman story are grossly misleading and/or inaccurate. I also fault Comcast/xfinity for not providing basic information on their router/modem/gateways about their units’ energy consumption (presumably in watts) to inform customers. I searched the web and tried calling only to come up empty. As an aside, I find it pretty crazy that this 15 pound battery back up was so feeble and incapable of providing power to a simple cable modem/router for at least 6-8 hours when my built-in apple laptop battery can run a computer and display for 18 hours and wi-fi.