Why is APC So Lame?

I've had a lot of respect for the build quality of APC power supplies since an incident where I almost had a fairly large one dropped on me.

I have never had a good experience with APC UPSs, my favourite anti-feature is the self-test that ends with power to the load being interrupted. The "shuts off instantly when cable connected" anti-feature bit a colleague of mine recently.

I have an APC ups for my two via Ubuntu servers, adsl, switch, etc for two years now and it works perfectly. I had many problems before because there where power drops and the via servers behaved abnormally after that. Now everything is very stable. We had a one hour power cut this summer (very exceptionnal) and everything worked perfectly. Both servers shutdown automatically after 30min, though they could hold 1hour (I tested). They automatically rebooted when the current was back.It has USB plug and looks like a big fat multiplug connector. It wasn't very expensive. I had one of another make before and it was sh*.

I've had about a dozen APCs in my home over the years. I've also had a handful of other UPSs from other companies. The APCs have always been the most reliable and lasted the longest.<p>We also use them for our computers and racks at work. Again, the APCs have always been the best.<p>Of course, they're also more expensive... So I guess it's a tradeoff. I'm particularly leery of unknown brands since one of those started sparking and I was worried it would kill me or burn the house down. I doubt I'll buy anything except the best names from now on.

APC is the Cisco/IBM/Microsoft of UPS's - nobody got fired for buying one.<p>That said, you can get the same quality for cheaper, but UPS's have a network effect - you don't want to have to install multiple shutdown software versions that work in different ways on all your equipment.<p>Also there's a lot of equipment out there (RAID frames, etc) that will only speak the APC protocol over a DB-9 serial link, unfortunately...

I've never had any problems with APC units, and I definitely recommend them over cheaper brands to others. I remember one incident where a lightning strike took out half the components in the unit. It couldn't keep the servers powered for that, but at least none of them were damaged, and the APC itself was back to work once the damaged components were replaced.

I am also baffled by the weird serial to USB cable my UPS came with. You're selling a product that is basically 90% battery and 10% smarts, and they don't seem to spend any money on the smarts.

&#62; how can APC, the market leader, be so overwhelmingly lame in this day and age?<p>Precisely because they are the market leader.