Should a person be this excited about a UPS?

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great style, USB support is fantastic

Cons: not available everywhere, a bit expensive

Author's Review
It’s amazing what can happen when good design is applied to a product that doesn’t really need to be improved. I’ve used various UPS’ before and they’ve all performed as expected, but I’ve only expected them to protect me from the infrequent power spike or outage. However, APC has raised the bar on UPS design with the APC Back-UPS Pro 500 with USB support. It not only provides the expected, but it also adds style and usability where you didn’t think you needed it. Here’s a list of what I see as the pros and cons of the APC Back-UPS Pro 500 with USB support:

PROS:

Most UPS’s are just a rectangular box with a couple of LEDs and some buttons on the front with outlets on the back. This UPS is different. APC went with a wedge style that allows for form and function. The outlets are on the angled top of the wedge that allows for easy access and keeps the cords up off the floor. It also keeps the footprint of the UPS much smaller than most that are long and flat with cords sticking out of the back. They also designed it to allow for cords with transformers so you don’t block other outlets.

The quick setup guide allowed for fast setup. Yeah…I know…what kind of setup is involved with a UPS, but you had to do things like connect the battery and install software for the USB support so it was nice to have the quick setup guide.

Battery is easily accessible via a slip off panel. Since the UPS comes with the battery disconnected, you have to open it up and slip on one of the connectors. Piece of cake, and they put a note right on top of the unit indicating that this has to be done. Having to do this also demonstrated how easy it is to change the battery. Just slip off an access cover, unplug two connectors, and slide the battery out.

This UPS comes with software that will provide battery status, and shutdown Windows 98 systems after an administered amount of time when there is a power outage. There is nothing hard about installing the software and the fact that it’s USB makes it even simpler. The software for shutting down Windows 98 shows up as part of the Power Management Properties. It shows the current power source, the runtime remaining on the battery, and a slider bar of when to initiate a shutdown as a percentage of battery life left. You can also enable it to save application data on shutdown.

This little beauty works like a charm. The first night I plugged it in there was a server storm. Although the power never went completely out, there were many power fluctuations and the UPS kicked in quite a few times without even a flicker on my monitor.

This UPS is also much lighter than older models, and with the much smaller footprint it makes for a great home PC UPS.

CONS:

The negatives for this UPS really are nit-picky, but I feel I have to write something.

When installing the USB driver you have to have your Windows 98 CD handy because it uses the standard USB peripheral driver, but it’s still very easy to do. There are no options to choose…just stick in the CD.

The UPS is a slow speed USB device, which means that it can not be used with USB cables that are longer than 3 meters. This isn’t much of a problem because you usually don’t have power cords that are that long.

This model is not available in as many places as some of the other models so you may have to search around for it a bit. I bought mine at Onsale.com and got a good price.

Since this is a USB device you can only use the power management software with USB enabled OS’s (Windows 98 and MAC). You can still use it as just a regular UPS with anything though.

It would be nice if the UPS had a handle so that you could move it with one hand. But it does have indentations on the sides so that you can easily pick it up with two hands.

OVERALL:

This is a great UPS. I would recommend it to anybody who wants a UPS for a computer system.