Belkin F6C550-AVR 550VA Battery Backup with Surge Protection Review

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(More customer reviews)Before buying any UPS, do some homework. It's not as simple as reading the watts sticker on your computer. Get to know what volt-amps means and decide if you need lots of battery run time or not. I believe many people end up buying too much UPS capacity (which is fine if you can afford it) because mfgrs' "wizards" are not very accurate. This unit, with its fairly low rating, is fine for my needs:
My requirements are to protect my equipment from surges and sags, to give me enough time to save and shut down when the power fails, and to run my DSL modem and WiFi base station for a few hours off and on during an extended outage (we get hurricanes on Cape Cod). I do not need server-class UPS backup, meaning automated shutdown and lengthy run time.
This unit works great for all of the above. It would not run my iMac G4 for very long beyond an emergency shutdown, but that's fine in my case.
The supplied (and downloadable new versions) of Bulldog software are terrible, however. I did not downgrade the unit's star rating for that because you don't need it.
On my Mac, Bulldog only served to display annoying false warnings and would lose connection with the UPS whenever the computer sleeps. Don't even bother installing it.

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Apple Time Capsule 2TB (4TH GENERATION) Review

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(More customer reviews)I've had two hard drive failures recently. I didn't want that to happen again, and Apple's release of revised Time Capsules this week was a signal to do something about it.
It's a fairly small unit, with simple hookups - the power cord, one LAN in, three LAN outs, and one USB port. There's only one light, which only shows two colors - amber (for something requiring attention) or green (for everything running smoothly). My setup was to be using the Time Capsule for Wi-Fi, while piggybacking off a router required by my ISP. Once I hooked up everything, I loaded AirPort Utility on my Mac, which walked me through setup of the Wi-Fi network and TIme Capsule. After setting it up, the unit rebooted and the light started blinking amber, indicating a problem. Here's where the Time Capsule was proven to be worth the money.
Over the years, I've spent a lot of time dealing with network hardware and traversing through the router's confusing interface. The blinking amber light gave me flashbacks to those days. But, this was different. I loaded up AirPort Utility, and it walked me through all indicated problems along with recommended solutions. After five minutes it was running correctly, indicated by a steady green light. I hooked up my PS3 and Xbox 360 to the Time Capsule Ethernet ports and they connected to their services flawlessly.
The summary here: Thirty minutes after taking the Time Capsule out of the box, I had a perfectly running Wi-Fi network, 2 devices running through the ethernet ports, and all my data being backed up to the hard drive. I've used a lot of consumer-level network hardware over the years, but nothing was as straightforward and pleasant to use as Time Capsule. I don't know why every company doesn't make it this easy, but it is how it should be. Highly recommended.
Edit: I just got a printer and hooked it up to the Time Capsule a few days ago. As with everything else, setup was absolutely no-fuss. Through USB, everything set up automatically and all I had to do was add it to the printer list in preferences.

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With the Apple Time Capsule, you'll be able to give your computer automatic, constant protection over a blazing-fast, secure wireless connection. Time Capsule includes a wireless hard drive designed to work with Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard or later. Just set Time Capsule as the designated backup drive for Time Machine, and that's it.
One-click continuous backup for your Mac using Time Machine.

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