What's a good affordable UPS?

H

hexstar

Registered
Hi, it's winter now and with all the good stuff on my macs hard drive and the storms that are occurring I feel a little nervous not having some form of protection in the event of a power outage since I do tend to leave my mac on 24/7. (I have a mac mini) As such I've decided that a UPS would be a wise purchase with my christmas money...I have $340 to spend and would like a good reliable UPS system that'll give me a couple minutes (like 5 or so) to be able to shutdown my mac in the event of a power outage...if possible I'd also like it to be capable of protecting any other mac desktop I may get in the future (e.g. a tower) as well (meaning the battery would have enough juice to provide 5 minutes or so for any tower mac or other desktop mac I may get in the future..I don't plan to be using both my mac mini and any future mac at the same time so they won't need to have enough juice from the battery at the same time). So does anyone know of a good UPS that could do as I've described while staying within my posted budget? Thanks! :)
 
I have ben using APC BackUPS devices, in various models, for years with great success. They even have a USB cable and software to automatically shutdown your Mac/PC in case the power is out and the battery is running low. Anything from the 500 model up are good, as they should give you 10 minutes or more of time.
 
also, how do UPSes in general (or if you're able, this UPS I'm looking at) handle the shutdown on loss of power? is it as soon as power is lost? or do they wait until a certain amount of the battery is drained before having the machine shutdown? is it a normal OS X shutdown or does it force quit all applications that may be waiting for a user response before closing (e.g. I will most likely have firefox open with multiple tabs and it'll have the dialog warning about closing with multiple tabs)? if it's a normal OS X shutdown how does it handle programs not closing because they are waiting for user response (I've always closed all my programs before shutting down so I don't know how this'd work)? does it wait to shutdown until all the programs have closed themselves via receiving user response or does it force quit the programs after some time? thanks! :)
 
hexstar said:
I've heard that Belkin is a better choice then APC for homes since Belkin's home models are cheaper then APC's but as reliable as UPSes from APC and as such I was thinking of getting this Belkin UPS: http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=171876 ...do you think this is a good choice for my posted needs? Thanks! :)
Click to expand...

I have not used the Belkin UPS, so cannot make any comments on the units. I have used other Belkin products, however, and they are generally very good. I would expect that they should perform well, but APC has been in this business, and that is their primary focus, for much longer, so they have a universal reputation.

When the main power goes out, the UPS automatically switches to the battery backup and the computer is not even directly aware. If the installed software for the UPS is configured to do so, there may be an indicator in the meny bar to explain the power mode and level (time remaining).

There is a control panel that permits the user (you) to indicate the conditions under which an automatic shutdown will be performed.

Since I was not present the only time the system shut my system down because of a power failure, I cannot say what conditions were met -- if the system does not shut down gracefully, then it will still power-off when the UPS runs out of battery power! In my case the system was shit down cleanly (I could tell this when I rebooted).

Of course, if you are present, the intent is to simply give you a grace period in which to save all of your work and shut down before the UPS runs out of power!
 
also, how does ups automatic shutdown handle a password protected screensaver? will it shutdown fine even if the screensaver is activated and usually needs a password before the screensaver will close? thanks! :)
 
hexstar said:
also, how does ups automatic shutdown handle a password protected screensaver? will it shutdown fine even if the screensaver is activated and usually needs a password before the screensaver will close? thanks! :)
Click to expand...

The following is an excerpt from the README for the PowerChute Personal Edition documentation from APC:

Shutdown : The OS shutdown performed by this application is
an emergency shutdown. No applications are closed and no
application data is saved. On restart some applications may
report a warning. This is expected behavior.
Click to expand...

And, yes, it does seem to cut through screensavers with passwords -- but you can test that yourself by setting the parameters accordingly. Note that the shutdown detection (actually the switch to battery power itself) may not work on some computers that go into sleep mode as the signal from the UPS does not wake the computer up. This is not a problem with the UPS, but the nature of sleep mode on those specific models of computers.
 
Highly recommend getting a UPS. I'm running an APC 1000XL and have been using it for approximately 5 years. The beautiful thing is that when the power goes off, it activates an audible alarm loud enough to be heard in another room. One of the really interesting things I discovered about the UPS is that it chimes when there is a surge too small for the house lights to detect. In addition, with the software, you can monitor the current and voltage fluctuations. I lived in Monterey for 2 years and there are some major current/voltage fluctuations there.
Another advantage of purchasing a UPS (mid-high end models) is that it provides your equipment (computer, monitor, etc) with a constant current/voltage flow. This will increase the life of your electronics considerably.

P.S. Not biased against the Belkins, just haven't used one.
 
Alright well I've had the Belkin UPS for a while now and I'm very happy with it :) ...the only issue at first was that the plug didn't fit smugly into the outlet such that if the plug was left alone it'd slip out...this was resolved simply enough though by plugging one of those outlet extenders (not a surge protector) into the outlet and the UPS into that as the UPS plug fit smugly in the extender...other then that OS X recognizes the UPS without the Belkin UPS software having to be installed and the UPS shutdown features can be managed in the Power system preference panel...only question I have is does anyone have a recommendation for the % left in the UPS I should set my mac to shutdown at? I currently have it at 70%...is that a good choice? The UPS is linked by me in this thread already earlier but I'll post its info again anyways to make it easier for you guys :) ...it's a 1100va 660watt UPS with 280 watts being consumed in the battery backup plugs and the manual states it'll provide backup power for around 1.5-4minutes at that rate...so is having OS X automatically shut down my mac at 70% depletion of my UPS a good choice? If not what would be better? thanks! :)

P.S. I've chosen not to use the BullDog UPS software Belkin provides because of reported issues with it failing to see the UPS after sleeping
 
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