When I bought my APC BackUPS 650 at CompUSA, it was when California
was first having outages and there was an anticipated possiblity of
the same out here. Its saved me from at least 4 or 5 reboots since -
the kind that kill the clocks too. God knows how many of those 1/30th
of a second outages that only seem to down computers its blocked as
well. I also have my alarm clock plugged into it too, so I can save
"The power failed" as an excuse to be late occasionally, since I wont
ever be legitimately using it :-)

I didnt even know APC had Linux drivers available for download when I
bought it. I just knew that of all the UPSes I've worked with in
businesses over the years, people seemed happiest with them, and I
havent personally known of one to fail yet. Basically, it was a brand
thing. When I learned they supported Linux as well, it only increased
my belief in the wholesomeness of APC as a good company.

"David A. Sinck" wrote:
> I was out shopping for a UPS for my new box (finally!) and did some
> quick comparisons that I thought I'd share with yall just to be nice.
> This isn't an exhaustive list of UPSes avail, just the operative ones
> in my decision making process.  :-)
> 
> Costco: 725 VA/ 450 watts  3 battery outlets/3 surge only $169
>         500 VA/ 280 w 3/3 $69
> 
> CompUSA: 900 VA/500w 3/3 $149
> 
> Bestbuy: oops, didn't write it down since it was worse off than
> CompUSA.  :-)
> 
> So given that I wanted a bit of oomph, I bought the device from
> CompUSA (please, no beatings).  It's got a serial port and comes
> *with* the appropriate cable.
> 
> So, I was as happy as a clam: a UPS with cool features ("Hey, Idiot,
> too much load" and the standard 'wiring fault', 'battery on', "I'm
> going to beep more than a mis-paste in vi", etc).
> 
> Then I saw the bundled software:
> 
>                                  APC
> 
> Yes, that's right, APC, the makers of finer name brand devices that
> are Linux compatible and have drivers for same.
...

-- 
jkenner @ mindspring . com__
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