What's a good affordable UPS?

Mon Jan 8 17:36:40 PST 2007

We have UPSes here (made the mistake of buying MGS UPSes). We didn't  
install the manufacturer's software, either, OS X seems to handle it  
well enough.
- We have ours set to shut down the systems when the UPS power level  
drops to 50%. (This is because when the batteries get old, their  
charge drops off much more quickly, so 50% might not buy much uptime  
in the end, and we don't trust the "time left" estimation.)
- When the power goes out, even if the screensaver is running, the  
machine will shut itself down as you have the System Preferences set  
to do so. If you want to intervene in that process, you have to enter  
your password to dismiss the screensaver, and you can then alter the  
settings, shut down early, or do whatever.
- There doesn't seem to be any record written in the system logs  
about power outages, I don't know why. Maybe it's a syslog level issue.

HTH,
Roland

On Jan 8, 2007, at 5:06 PM, Hex Star wrote:

> hello??? can anyone answer that question please??? thanks! :-)
>
> I'd also appreciate a response to what's below...thanks! :-)
>
> Alright well I've had the Belkin UPS for a while now and I'm very  
> happy with it  ...the only issue at first was that the plug didn't  
> fit smugly into the outlet such that if the plug was left alone  
> it'd slip out...this was resolved simply enough though by plugging  
> one of those outlet extenders (not a surge protector) into the  
> outlet and the UPS into that as the UPS plug fit smugly in the  
> extender...other then that OS X recognizes the UPS without the  
> Belkin UPS software having to be installed and the UPS shutdown  
> features can be managed in the Power system preference panel...only  
> question I have is does anyone have a recommendation for the % left  
> in the UPS I should set my mac to shutdown at? I currently have it  
> at 70%...is that a good choice? The UPS is linked by me in this  
> thread already earlier but I'll post its info again anyways to make  
> it easier for you guys  ...it's a 1100va 660watt UPS with 280 watts  
> being consumed in the battery backup plugs and the manual states  
> it'll provide backup power for around 1.5-4minutes at that  
> rate...so is having OS X automatically shut down my mac at 70%  
> depletion of my UPS a good choice? If not what would be better?  
> thanks!
>
> P.S. I've chosen not to use the BullDog UPS software Belkin  
> provides because of reported issues with it failing to see the UPS  
> after sleeping
>
> On 12/27/06, Hex Star <hexstar at gmail.com > wrote:
> also, how does ups automatic shutdown handle a password protected  
> screensaver? will it shutdown fine even if the screensaver is  
> activated and usually needs a password before the screensaver will  
> close? thanks! :)
>
>
> On 12/27/06, Hex Star <hexstar at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh one more thing...is there a way to tell in OS X if your mac has  
> cleanly shutdown the last time it powered off? Thanks! :-)
>
> On 12/27/06, Hex Star < hexstar at gmail.com> wrote:
> thanks alot guys for your replies...so sounds good...the main  
> purpose of a UPS is indeed to just give me time to save my open  
> stuff and shutdown my mac safely and if I want it to be able to  
> auto shutdown my mac if I'm not around then I need to make sure I  
> don't have apps open that will need user interaction before closing  
> if I plan to leave for a long time during a storm...thanks again  
> for all your help guys, greatly appreciated! :-)
>
>
> On 12/27/06, Shawn Erickson < shawnce at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 27, 2006, at 7:39 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.
>
> Mac OS X / Mac hardware understands UPS requests. See the man page
> for pmset.
>
> UPS SPECIFIC ARGUMENTS
>       UPS-specific arguments are only valid following the -u option.
> UPS set-settings
>       tings also have an on/off value. Use a -1 argument instead of
> percent or
>       minutes to turn any of these settings off. If multiple halt
> conditions
>       are specified, the system will halt on the first condition that
> occurs in
>       a low power situation.
>
>       haltlevel - when draining UPS battery, battery level at which
> to trigger
>       an emergency shutdown (value in %)
>       haltafter - when draining UPS battery, trigger emergency
> shutdown after
>       this long running on UPS power (value in minutes)
>       haltremain - when draining UPS battery, trigger emergency
> shutdown when
>       this much time remaining on UPS power is estimated (value in
> minutes)
>
> Also note (think added in 10.3.3 timeframe)...
>
> < http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/ 
> mh2335.html>
>
> -Shawn
>
>
>
>
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