APC (BX800) UPS System

Pros: A worthwhile investment to protect one's computer, peripherals and data.
Cons: You lose one USB port dedicated to operate the unit.

After the power flickered, not even long enough to reset the time on the microwave, but caused the computer to shut down and re-boot, I decided it was time to do a bit more than protect my computer from voltage spikes. A backup that would keep the ...

Pros: AVR voltage stabilization, long runtime, reliable, excellent customer service
Cons: none

I live in southern Maine, and have the misfortune to have power supplied by Central Maine Power (Motto "only *some* of our employees are knuckledragging chimpanzees, the rest are brain-dead", or "outage, what outage, we were letting the lines rest" ) ...

Pros: Automatic Voltage Regulation. The cheap ones don't have this
Cons: VERY HEAVY! About 20#

Unit was purchased from Circuit city. Installation was easy, about 6 minutes including software. In my area, I get a lot of brownouts in the winter and I've spent several hundred dollars on new equipment and repairs. This device will mitigate this. What's neat about the software is I can see how much power I'm pulling (in watts) from the APC. I have a large tower system with a 500 watts PS, three printers, 17" monitor, halogen desk lamp, phone, fax, scanner and other stuff connected to the APC and I still have over 200 watts overhead when everything is in use. The LEDs on the APC are green (normal), yellow (power out and on battery) and red (unit failure). All this is reflected in the software. At $120 this is cheap insurance. PS When buying an UPS look for AVR. you'll like this feature.

Pros: Easy install Overstated requirement. 800 watts is lots
Cons: None, so far.

I hooked this up to the following:
P4 computer
Analog monitor
speaker system
24 port switch
4 port router
7 computers on a peer-to-peer network.
cable modem
officejet pro 1150c
Hardware/Software installs flawlessly (Win2k).
Registration a bit wordy.


When I check out the "load", I see less than 270 Watts being used. I thought a wattage > my power supply would be OK, then I kept adding stuff to see if it would balk. Seems to handle much more than rated draws.
Pulled the plug repeatedly and reinserted. No bad.
I typically have power outages of less than 3 seconds. This has totally hosed some computers. So, I pulled the plug and reinserted it repeatedly, nothing failed.

I'll update this as I experience more.

So far, so good.