[Grant_G]

Just updated to 10.3.3 and activated the Energy Saver preference panel. No sign of the UPS controls there, as advertised and mentioned by a couple of others. Mine's a Belkin that I have had for close to 5 years. We don't experience many power failures where I live, but the last time we did and I came into the office right after, there was a dialog box urgently telling me to save any unsaved files because the UPS did not have sufficient charge to remain on any longer. Then the computer went dead ... all this in the space of under two minutes.
Time for a replacement?
G

[drmbb]

My experience has been that about 4-6yrs max is what you can expect from the battery (that's mostly working with APC units, but they all use similar sealed lead-acid batteries). That's pretty much independent of how often the power may have gone out as the lead-acid cells just degrade with time.
APC has trade in programs for their units with replaceable batteries - it's a fair bit less than a whole new unit. I don't know about Belkin, although I have a couple of their 500VA units at home so I can check the documentation this evening.

[Philbert]

Hi Grant, (hope you're feeling better)
Yep, sounds like it's time for a replacement battery or a whole new UPS. I've replaced two batteries since 1996. One was for a small, APC 450 and the other was for an APC Back-UPS Pro 650. The battery for the 650, I bought from a third party dealer and it lasted less than a year. The one for the 450, I bought straight from APC and it's still working fine after 5 years.
FWIW - Rather than buying another battery for the 650 from APC, (about $60 I think), I just bought a new BackUPS pro 1100 from Sam's Club for $125. (brick n mortar) Great price, but it's a monster @ 42 lbs.
Edit:
"No sign of the UPS controls there, as advertised and mentioned by a couple of others."
Just a guess but I think you would need to have the UPS connected via USB in order for it to show up. Doesn't appear for me either.

[Kazoo]

Hi Grant,
Looks like it may be time for at least a new battery, maybe even a whole new unit. I bought a 500va model for like $55 on sale at office max or office depot, I don't remember which, not a bad deal.
My 6 month old APC ES 500 shows up and I can see the battery charge- mine is at 100% right now, I can set the preferences for shut down the way I want, it works great. Like mentioned earlier, I think you have to have it connected via usb.

[Grant_G]

I'm waiting for a reply to an inquiry I made to APC a while ago. I'm not wanting to spend a lot of money, but on the other hand it would be nice to be able to plug both Macs into it, and still get 10 minutes of power in case of emergency. Hmmmmm, USB huh? That idea never entered my mind, perhaps because mine's old enough that USB wasn't very universal then. (Darn, what's with all the puns lately?)
I'll email you on the other matter ... also have a new photo for you.
G

[RichL]

Hi Philbert:
I have one of those APC 450 jobs. Frankly, I've forgotten /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif about it??
I guess I should go unplug it and see if the battery is still any good?
Did you get the battery direct from APC?
RichL

[Grant_G]

Just a headsup for anyone who's also in this situation. After a couple of emails back and forth with APC, they told me about their Trade UPS program. They actually took my Belkin in trade for a new APC BK500 unit -- twice as many outlets as the Belkin. Trade-in price $77, and they pre-pay shipping for the return. They had another 500 unit for around $38 as I recall, 3 outlets. I wanted to connect Mo's iMac as well as my G5, so opted for the larger unit.
Really good deal IMHO.
G

[drmbb]

Doh, and I was just about to post this BelKin 800VA deal at CDW!
Still, your APC trade in sounds pretty good too, especially as that will include disposing of the old unit (can't just pitch these things when they go belly up).

[Philbert]

Sounds good, Grant.
It appears that model comes with USB connectivity so you'll be able to use the PowerChute software. None of my APC's have USB so if I want to use the software, I have to buy some sort of serial to USB adapter. To me, the only drawback to the BK500 is that only three of the six outlets are battery protected - the other three are only surge suppressors. Still should work for you though - that gives you enough battery outlets for the iMac, the G5 and your monitor, (although using all of them at the same time might be pushing the battery's capacity).
I was thinking about run time. If I'm here during the day - either using the computer or shuffling about, I'll know if the power goes out and be able to shut down safely. But during the night or when I'm not here, my Mac is in deep sleep. Shouldn't that greatly increase the amount of run time for any given UPS? Anyone know how many amps a deep-sleeping Mac draws? I would think minutes of run time would turn into hours for a sleep'ed Mac.
RichL -
Yep, straight from APC. I think it's this guy. (but check to make sure)

[drmbb]

Actually, with the USB cable connection, Energy Saver in Sys. Prefs will see the UPS, and offer you options for shutting down. However, the shell script it uses to initiate the shutdown seems to depend on a program called "watchdog", which I know is installed with OS X Server, but isn't for standard OS X (at least not on my machines). APC's powerchute software works fine for me (under 10.3.2 and so far under 10.3.3) - you'll have to download it as they don't include disks for Mac OS. It has two modes - set a time to maximize battery reserves, or, set a time to maximize run time for the computer (since a fully drained battery may take up to 24hrs to fully recharge once the power comes back on).
And yes, I'd assume that a sleeping computer would draw drastically less power from the battery, but how much less, I really don't know. Here at work, I have an APC SmartUPS 1500 (1500VA/980Watt), with my 1.25Mhz DP PowerMac, and a 400Mhz PII Win2000 machine plugged into it (the monitors are NOT plugged into the ups). Neither machine sleeps fully (ie. just HDs and monitors) - when they're idle they run seti@home - and the 1500 has powered both of them for up to 12-to-15 minutes (since I got it, that's the longest power outage I have direct witness of - the 1500 is only a few months old too).
APC's web site has some run time charts for various UPS sizes under various loads - they might give you a better idea.

[RichL]

That is a good deal.
I have the APC BK350 already. So I guess they won't be taking that in a trade. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
RichL

[Grant_G]

Check out the Trade UPS site, the default trade in is APC. For anything else you check "other" and the screen changes. Yep, they take their own back in trade too.
Update to earlier. I've just heard once again from my contact, and he's a little concerned that I'm connecting two Macs to a BK500 (and of course he reminded me it has only 3 battery connections). He said if it's overloaded, if a failure occurs it will go into "overload" and shut down to protect its own circuitry. I have asked him to check on connecting an iMac with an integrated monitor, a G5 SP, and a CRT external monitor to the 3 battery connections. Awaiting a reply, but I think I'm okay.
I better be -- it was supposed to have shipped today before 2 p.m. Eastern.
G

[drmbb]

Actually, you may be straining a 500VA ups with all that. What's the power rating on the APC model you ordered? You can look up the peak power draw of your computers and monitor (should be in Apple spec files) to see if your way over the UPS's rating.
Just playing around with the UPS selector program on TrippLite's web site, I do think a 500VA model is pretty light for the load you want to put on it. Ideally, it looks like you'd be better off with something in the 1000VA and 400Watt rating. Something like that should give you between 6-10 minutes back (at full load - ie. both computers and monitors on, nothing sleeping). More importantly, it won't overload the UPS and either ruin it by overheating, or drastically cut its usefull life span. APC's BX1000 (or BR1000 - they are the same thing) might be a good choice. I don't know how much they are through APC (especially as you have your trade in value) but they ar $100 at CircuitCity right now (with rebates).

[Philbert]

Ha! I was in Circuit City just last night (haven't been in over a year), and noticed the BX 1000 with rebate - I came here to mention it! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif