APC BE750G Power Saving Battery Back-UPS
by APC
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List Price: Our Price: $88.15 You Save: $21.84 (20%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $75.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of APC BE750G Power Saving Battery Back-UPS
Customer Review: Works great but it fried the USB connection on my motherboard
Summary: 3 Stars
The problem is that this device has an OPTIONAL USB plug that connects to your computer telling your computer that the power was just disconnected and the timer starts counting and when it reaches the predefined remaining battery power limit, it sends a signal to your computer via USB to tell the computer to shut down. It's this feature that has caused my computer damage and I've had it verified by a local computer repair shop.
Somehow or another, a power surge caused this device to surge the USB port and thus damaging the USB connection to the motherboard and now I am unable to connect any USB devices to the computer. I still love this UPS device and will continue to use it but my recommendation is that you don't use the optional USB plugin. Windows already comes with power failure software and though it's not near as good as the one that is provided to you on CD with this device, it is sufficient. I am assuming you're using windows, of course.
I only run the computer, the monitor and my external hard drives through the master outlets on this UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) device and I am able to run all systems with a full black out for 36 minutes. That's pretty damn good if you ask me. 99% of the time, the power to my home will turn back on within that time frame but when it doesn't, Windows will shut down for me but doesn't shut down my external hard drives, unfortunately, so I have to be sure I turn those off when I go to bed, just in case.
Something failed in the USB connection from this device to my computer and I'm not sure why it failed but it did and it damaged my computer. So, I took a star off for the failure and another star for damaging my equipment. I realize there will be people who disagree with me but the truth is, as with a lot of hardware and software, it's very difficult to sift through the variables of what COULD have went wrong but I've never experienced anything like this before until I hooked up this item. I could be wrong and so could the technician at the store I took it to, but in the end I have no way of verifying 100% that this device caused the problem. Then again, nothing is ever 100%.
Other than that, I love having this thing because I get a lot of "brown-outs" here in Texas as the weather seems to be sporadic at times.
Customer Review: Alternate uses for this UPS - So far so good...
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently purchased 2 of these UPS units from my local wholesale club (at a comparable price from whats listed here on Amazon). I rated this product 5 stars because I have nothing bad to say about it yet (I haven't experienced any power outages so I may post a re-review if this does happen).
I did NOT purchase these units to power my computers (although I should). I have a wood burning pellet stove to keep the house warm in the winter months. If you also own a pellet stove without a built-in battery backup system, you probably know the risks of running it during an unexpected power failure. The exhaust fan will also fail during a power failure and you risk having your entire house fill up with smoke. I've been lucky that this has not yet happened to me but I bought this battery backup just to be safe. I've read where others have used UPS' like these for emergency power outages to keep the internal exhaust fan running (at least for a period while the existing pellets have burned up entirely - 10 minutes or so should do it). The idea is that if a power outage occurs, you should shut off your stove and let the exhaust fan continue to run on the battery backup until the unit cools down. I'm fairly certain the fan does not draw as much power as a computer & monitor and should do the job while the stove cools down.
I purchased a second backup unit for use with my Salt-Water aquarium. If you own an aquarium, you can probably relate to the amount of expenses required to start and maintain it. A long power outage could be fatal to your livestock and all the dedication and money that you put into it (a power outage could cause a rapid drop in water temperature and possibly the filter system reversing back into the tank). I'm currently running only my aquarium heater and filter pumps on the battery backup outlets and the lighting system on just the surge protected outlets. My hopes are that the pumps and heater draw such little power that this backup could keep the most important things running interrupted for a number of hours if necessary.
Now I just need to save up for a couple more units to cover my computer equipment! I hope this review helps anyone who has considered purchasing a UPS for something other than a computer system.
Customer Review: excellent UPS. my first one. :D bought another one (8 outlet one)
Summary: 5 Stars
this was my first UPS. I did a lot and lot of research before finally settling down with this one. I'm using this with my Macbook pro (early 2008), Wireless router (DIR-655), readynas duo, xbox 360, dell 2408 LCD, external HD, USB hub, etc.
it works extremely well. i had it for over 4 months now and had a black out for 15 mins (the entire neighborhood was out in Queens, NY). Had enough time to shutdown my NAS server and my MBP (note: the MBP obviously has it's own batteries to run off of so I guess this has double redundancy). the UPS was detected via System Preferences in Mac OS X 10.5.6, and you don't need to install any of the software that is distributed by APC.
You can set up the UPS by the Energy panel in System preferences. However, I don't think the concept of UPS shutting down the computer automatically works so well with MacBook Pro's (or any laptop) because of the fact that the MBP has it's own batteries and the UPS has no way of detecting that. But for desktops this won't be an issue.
it's big and it's heavy, but it's also good looking for a UPS. I highly recommend this to anyone who needs an excellent UPS for mac/pc.
one last note:
in regards to the Master Control & the "Green" feature... the Green feature is that when a computer is connected to the Master Outlet (there's 1 master outlet) and the computer is ON, the UPS detects that the Master is withdrawing power, thus being used. However, when the UPS detects that the computer (master) is off, it will cut off the power from the outlet's that are being controlled by the MASTER OUTLET. The concept is that you are suppose to connect things such as Speakers, printers, etc. that are being used along with the MASTER DEVICE, i.e., your computer, and when the computer is off you won't be needing the speakers and/or printers. it's a useful concept, but so far, doesn't seem to be working so well in my situation. I turn my MBP off (it's connected to the MASTER outlet), and my Logitech Z5500 speakers are connected to the control outlet. The speakers don't turn off... I'm guessing this has something to do with the fact that the MASTER is a laptop. not sure what's going on here...
all in all, 5 out of 5. it does it's job and does it superbly.
Customer Review: Very nice UPS
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been needing a UPS for quite some time now, but kept putting it off - it's certainly not one of the flashier computer upgrades, you won't notice any performance increase, and good quality models aren't exactly cheap. That ended about 3 weeks ago when a power spike fried several of the components in my computer system, and cost me several hundred dollars in replacement parts. I immediately began researching UPSes, and this one came up as a very appealing option.
One of the things that I was concerned with while researching and shopping was that I'd end up with a UPS that was inadequate for my fairly power-hungry machine. For the record, my computer specs are:
- Core2 Duo E6600 overclocked to 3.2GHz
- ATI Radeon 4870
- 2x 640GB 7200RPM HDDs
- 24" LCD
I wasn't exactly sure how much power my system would draw. The easy way to tell this is to buy (or borrow) a Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor which will tell you exactly how much power any given outlet is supplying. Having misplaced my Kill-A-Watt some time ago, I guessed and hoped my guess was accurate. According to the APC Power Chute software, my PC draws 156W (11 minutes estimated runtime) at idle, and 261W (6 minutes estimated runtime) at full load, so this UPS gives me plenty of headroom.
Another concern I had was that, since my home office is in my bedroom, the audible alarm could potentially go off in the middle of the night and wake me up. The APC Power Chute software has options to prevent this, in fact the default setting is no audible alarm between the hours of 8PM and 8AM, so this is not going to be a problem at all.
All in all, I am very pleased with my purchase, and I feel good knowing that my hardware is protected. Too bad I had to have a problem before I bought a UPS. If you're on the fence, don't wait until you're computer gets hosed! Whether you get this UPS or a different one, I can't over exaggerate how important a UPS is.
Customer Review: Competent device that works fine with OS X
Summary: 5 Stars
I asked for 2 of these for my birthday, and received them for my wonderful wife. One for our Mac Mini and one for our Windows 7 machine.
The Mac Mini did not yet have a UPS connected to it, so I made sure to install that UPS first. The installation was quite easy. I did not use the coax or modular connection interfaces, but I did use the Master and Controlled by Master feature and the UPS data connection.
Initially, the Master and Controlled by Master feature didn't work correctly out of the box due to the low power usage of the Mac-Mini. It took me having to read the user manual to learn how to change the sensitivity of this feature to "low". It took me 2 or three tries to figure it out over about 5 minutes, but I finally figured it out and it seems to work appropriately -- when the Mac-mini goes into sleep mode, the UPS automatically will turn off the monitor completely for me.
The USB data connection cable was THE most pleasing feature of this device. My Mac-Mini running Snow Leopard IMMEDIATELY recognized the UPS connection and began to display the status of the UPS at the top of the screen. Snow Leopard provides all of the functionality that I need built-in that the APC provided software provides including the ability to have the machine turn-off automatically at a certain battery discharge point and to change the power usage of the system while on battery. This was VERY cool to find supported by OS X. Very happy about this functionality.
As mentioned above, the other UPS was for my Windows 7 machine. When I finally got around to replacing the old UPS with this new model, I again was very pleased to find that Windows 7 recognized it immediately and allowed me to configure run times as well. Seems to do just fine with Windows 7 as it did with Snow Leopard.