What's a good affordable UPS?

[Rik Ahlberg]

You don't need to use any 3rd-party software to configure a UPS with  
a modern Mac. Apple has built the configuration into Mac OS X for UPS  
units that can plug in to a USB port on your Mac:
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2335.html>

I have been using APC's Back-UPS 500 units for years on my Power Mac.  
Works great, saves a lot of work, and reduces wear and tear on the  
computer.

Apps that cancel quits or cancel shutdown are annoying. Avoid them  
and you'll be OK.

Keep in mind that the battery on any UPS will need to be replaced  
about every two years.

Rik


On Dec 27, 2006, at 10:39 AM, Chad Leigh wrote:

>
> On Dec 27, 2006, at 2:29 AM, Hex Star wrote:
>
>> well really all I'm concerned about is my mac being able to  
>> shutdown normally so that there isn't a chance of file system  
>> corruption, I wouldn't leave things like word documents or other  
>> important nature open and just leave for a long time far away from  
>> my mac so in those cases I'd be near my mac so I could shut it  
>> down and save the documents within the time frame given by the  
>> UPS, all other times I typically just leave Firefox open with  
>> gmail, paypal, and the apple store in tabs ... so if I use the  
>> auto ups shutdown feature, since I have firefox set to warn on  
>> closing when there's multiple tabs (sometimes when I stay up too  
>> late I accidentally click the X for the main window and the  
>> warning comes in handy), would the auto shutdown feature force  
>> firefox to close? or would it be better for me to just disable the  
>> warn on closing when there's multiple tabs alert? Er actually does  
>> the UPS execute the shutdown as soon as power is lost or after it  
>> looses a good amount of power? Guess it'd make sense for it to  
>> wait a bit to allow for saving of open documents first...but if it  
>> doesn't would it then just do a normal OS X shutdown? And if so  
>> what does OS X do when trying to shutdown and there's apps open  
>> that don't want to close because of alert dialogs? Does it wait  
>> until the matter is fixed or does it force close the programs  
>> after some time? sounds like this is the UPS for me...now if I can  
>> just figure out how that mentioned event will play out I'll be all  
>> set...thanks alot! :D
>>
>
> I don't have a UPS software installed on my Mac so I do not know  
> how they do a shutdown, but I would expect they would issue a  
> shutdown event, the same as choosing "Shutdown" in the menu or hit  
> the power button and get the shutdown dialog and tell it to  
> shutdown.  In my experience, when that happens, if an app cannot be  
> quit, for example, the app puts up an alert to save documents and  
> the alert does not have a timeout, then the shutdown is cancelled.   
> I think the system waits for 2min or something like that, from my  
> memory, before it cancels.
>
> Chad