APC UPS 1500VA Battery Backup Surge Protector, BR1500G Backup Battery Power Supply with AVR

I've owned one BR1500G for a few years and just bought a second one for another computer. The first one was bought directly from APC, as an upgrade, were the price included return shipping for disposal of the old unit. There was a significant software problem with that BR1500G. The computer thought the UPS was a battery as in laptop battery and Windows XP tried to manage the unit quite incorrectly. The problem was that the APC-supplied software needed to be installed BEFORE the battery control was connected to the computer via a USB cable. The kicker was that APC directions said to do things in the opposite order. This led to multiple telephone conversations with APC support to first return the computer to standard power management and second to properly install the control software. I want to report that the support was knowledgeable and outstanding.Once the battery was properly hooked up to the computer and the software properly installed I was quite impressed by the total setup. That software (a minor version earlier than their current software) does several good things: 1) periodic self-test of the battery, 2) gives good and coherent options to mange problem power, 3) uses hibernate to shut down the computer in emergencies even on non-laptop machines, and 4) can remove/restore power to equipment when the computer suspends itself/wakes up.I was happy enough with the APC hardware and software to order a second BR1500G when it was time to replace another UPS. The software installation problems have disappeared and bringing up the second system took a total of ten minutes; the battery was shipped here charged.This UPS actually provides five functionally different sets of plugs: 1) the main component, i.e., your computer, is the sole user in the first set - the battery "knows" when it is powered up versus suspended of powered down - and power is supplied with battery backup; 2) there is a second set of components that are supplied with battery backup that are powered up when your computer is powered/woken up and powered down when your computer goes to sleep/is powered down; 3) another set of component are supplied with battery backup power independent of whether your computer is powered or not; 4) this set is powered or not as the computer but only enjoys surge protection, not battery backup; 5) this set is always powered but enjoys only surge protection, not battery backup. There is only one plug for set 1 and one plug for set 2. If you want to put more than one component in set 2 (don't think about more than one in set 1), use a splitter cable. This is a great arrangement to manage power sensibly. My computers go to sleep (S3 suspend) when not used for a while and proper usage of the plug sets can save the price of the BR1500G in about a year! (By my back of the envelope computations.)Here are some examples of components that would properly be plugged in to each plug set: 1) your computer, 2) the monitor on that computer, 3) your network router - the network shouldn't be cutoff just because one computer is off, 4) a printer connected directly to your computer, and 5) a printer on your LAN.The hardware works; the software has some very good control features and some very informative sub-applications. I've now been using at least one BR1500G for several years and am delighted. All in all, I've been using multiple APC products for a decade or more (as well as trying competitors products) and have been very satisfied. A few new capabilities have been added in APC's latest products that are good for me, e.g., the plug sets and better energy/green tracking. Finally, when I had a problem, APC support was there and competent.

Have used APC for well over a decade and though I have tried others, I seem to keep coming back to APC. Solid, reliable, expensive (unfortunately), but well wirth the price. My config is a 27" imac (late 2011 vintage), pair of Lacie 2 TB Firewire 800 drives, a few other varied items. Not a heave load for the likes of this size of UPS. I saw the display saying I had an estimated 120 mins of run time on battery, so I decided to test it. BTW, you can silence the alarm when it is running on battery.I pulled the ups power plug and was shocked to see that that the run time estimate wasn't falling faster than real time, so their estimate appeared like it might actually be real. Then I let it go and decided to check in on it periodically. When I cam back 30 mins later, the estimated time was up to like 188 mins? What? how did that happen? So I looked over at my imac and realized it had gone into sleep mode (it is set to do that after 20 mins in power management on the imac), so the power draw fell and hence the run time estimate went up. Ugg, I wasn't going to wait 3 hours to see how accurate the time estimate was so I decided to increase the load. I plugged in my Canon MX850 into the UPS, put unless it is printing it doesn't draw much either. So I put in a dvd and let it roll at full brightness. All that finally got the runtime down to about 90 mins.I came back after 75 or so mins to see if it was still on track to shut down in about 15 mins and it was. I let it go down to about 4 mins and then I shut down the imac and kept cycling the power on the printer and the usb drives to cause them to keep drawing as much as possible. I finally got it down to about 1 min and thought great, I am close now. However the unit just kept going and going. I am sure it is because my load dropped so much that it the time estimate was to tough to get right. So after about 5 minutes of watching the 1 minute run time estimate stay on the ups, I decided to see if I could kill this zombie like undying ups, so I plugged in an 1800 hair dryer my wife uses. About 20 seconds of that finally killed the 1 minute of life.In summary, I am impresses, very impressed. As long as the load on the ups stays relatively consistent, the time estimate is very good. All my gear ran happilly on the battery power and the unit is quiet while idle, relatively quiet while on battery and quiet while charging. The only minor complaint (and it is minor) is that they don;t have powerchute software for the mac os x. This isn't a big thing since the mac will and does (in my case) talk with the ups and has its own built in battery management settings, but I would have hoped APC would have realized that not all their customer base uses Windows. Powerchute is a cool program and I would use it if it worked with Lion.