APC Back-UPS ES 500 Backup Battery and Surge Protector
by APC
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List Price: Our Price: $75.99 You Save: $4.00 (5%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days 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 Back-UPS ES 500 Backup Battery and Surge Protector
Customer Review: You can't go wrong, here...
Summary: 5 Stars
The ES 500 is a great little backup unit. Easy to use, long battery life (about 25 min. with a desktop PC plugged in; 2 hrs. with a notebook PC plugged into it). It includes full surge protector capabilities, so you won't need to buy another one of those. It also has several outlets which are widely-spaced so you can plug in transformers for your PC speakers, etc. without covering up a traditional outlet. And it protects your phone lines as well.
We use two of these in our retail shop: 1.) On our point-of-sale 'cash register' computer, and 2.) On our network equipment and DSL modem so that the Internet keeps working because our cash register is dependent on the Internet, and power flashes interupt 'net access. We live in a rural electric cooperative area which has a lot of "blinks," especially during thunderstorms and high wind situations.
At home, we also have it hooked up to our network/DSL equipment. (We use laptop PC's at home, so if the power goes out, we can still compute...at least we have some entertainment during an outage!) We also plug our Tivo and DVD recorder into one so that we don't have to reset them after each power outage (the battery will last several hours if that's all you have plugged into it).
BUT, don't think you need to suffer a complete failure for this product to be useful! When you use the included software to view occasional reports from the battery backup, you'll be amazed how many times the backup has to kick in to correct a "dirty power" situation.
If you compute in an area or building with "dirty" power that surges/spikes or "blinks," or simply has brownouts/voltage drops (and you might not even realize these are happening) this box will smooth it all out to the point that you might not even notice. Smooth power will definitely extend your computer's life.
Buy it, plug your old power strips into it, and forget it (unless you want to occasionally review the reports, in which case you need to hook it to your PC through a USB cable and install the included software). In about 3 years, the batteries will have exceeded their life and you'll have to buy another.
Warning: The "Computer running on battery power" beep alarm is LOUD. If you have the ES 500 connected to your PC via USB cord and have their software installed, you can disable the alarm, however. (But you don't have to run the software and have it hooked to a PC cable to enjoy backup battery power.)
As of this writing, the shipping is free (it weighs 14 lbs.), and Amazon has the lowest price anywhere, SO HOW CAN YOU GO WRONG? It could be the best $50 you ever spend...your computer will certainly think so.
Customer Review: Horrible Customer Support
Summary: 2 Stars
The UPS unit itself works just fine. It kicks in properly when power fails, allowing me to save my work and safely shut down my computer. It even automatitcally shuts down the computer when I'm not available to do so myself.
Having said that, APC's customer support is downright horrible. I contacted them concerning an issue with a recent software upgrade, explaining the situation in some detail (two paragraphs) and asking for a possible resolution. I received a poorly written, canned, response in return which did not relate at all to anything I had said. This happened again following two more follow-up messages. Either they were not reading, or could not understand, what I was writing.
Angry at this point, I sent another message, including all the previous messages and replies, bluntly asking for this message to be delivered to someone who spoke English and could actually read what was sent. To my surprise, I received a response saying it was being sent to the software developers who would respond in detail. However, a few days later, I received a message stating that, since I had not contacted the company in some time, my problem had apparently been resolved. Of course, it had not been resolved - I was still waiting for the promised response.
I gave up at this point. I never did receive a response from the software people, nor has the issue been resolved to this day. This company has apparently outsourced their customer support to a third-world country, using employees whose command of the English language is questionable at best. This was insufficient to handle even a relatively minor issue like mine. Further, I'm not exactly thrilled about the loss of American jobs as a result of overseas outsourcing (obviously "American" is only good enough to use in a company name). Therefore, since I'm buying a new computer this week, I'll look for another company who takes customer support, and American workers, more seriously. I urge others to consider the same option.
Customer Review: Great product with one key flaw
Summary: 4 Stars
Mostly, this is great. You get a reasonably powerful backup system, software control, and even a nice power strip. With its 500VA rating, you'll have plenty of power to ride out a short outage, and plenty of time to safely shut down in a longer outage. It's easy to set up and works great.OK, here is the key flaw. This unit is advertised as being a great item for home or home-office computers. Problem: Its alarm starts to beep - quite loudly - ANY time the power goes out. I find this really inappropriate for a piece of electronics. My power is reasonably reliable, but like most people, we have occasional outages. In fact, my local utility likes to service the lines in the middle of the night.
Do I really need a loud beeper to wake up the family every time we have a 10 minute outage at 3am?
APC really needs to add a control to deactivate or otherwise control the alarm.
Customer Review: Good Product - But Mac users beware
Summary: 3 Stars
I purchased this unit after reading the reviews here. The unit works very well and is easy to install. One point mentioned in earlier reviews, however, needs to be revisited and clarified.
The on-battery alarm CANNOT be disabled with the software if you are running it on a Mac. The alam CAN be disabled with software if you are running it on a PC.
This means that if you plan to use this unit on a Mac and you really want to disable the annoying alarm that beeps every 30 seconds when the system goes to battery power you have one choice: Install the unit and software on a PC first and disable the alarm through the PC interface. Then install the unit and software on your Mac with the alarm now disabled. If you don't have a PC available to act as a SWITCH like this, then you are out of luck and you will have no way to turn off the ear-splitting alarm.
Customer Review: Great backup power supply, even refurbished
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this along with other components to make an Atom/ION media PC and found it to be a perfect "overkill" backup power supply.
For the standard PC it is rated to last a good 10-12 minutes if you have an EXTREMELY low-power setup. With my setup, it latest a good half hour... then I aborted the test since the beeping was annoying for the test. In a normal situation, the beeping would be a good indicator to get things taken care of.
Now for the con that drops the Ease-of-use rating: APC uses a proprietary cable to interface to USB, rather than a standard port. The cable is surprisingly difficult to find at a reasonable cost. Given that the cable is just a USB->10P10C (much like std ethernet port, but 10 pins), it can cost ~ $2 with self-purchased parts... if you can find 'em...