Digital Trends

APC Back-UPS ES 725

March 10th, 2004 | by Jeff Fila

PowerChute Monitoring Software

PowerChute was not without its quirks however. APC provides a downloadable demo of PowerChute that simulates its use. It doesn't connect to a UPS and is only for demonstration purposes, however, it is supposed to be a good representation of the program. (Follow this link to download the PowerChute demo)

We noted that in the demo version of PowerChute there was a “Load on Battery Backup” section in the “Monitor System” tab. We thought this was a great feature and wanted to see how much our system was really drawing. Unfortunately, when we loaded our version of PowerChute personal edition (both version 1.2 which was included and version 1.4 which we downloaded) that option was not available. We wanted to determine if this was really supposed to be available so we contacted APC's technical support.

First we contacted support with their online chat feature. After talking with two support reps, both of whom said that function should be available to our system, they suggested we call someone in support to talk about it. We then called support and the representative we talked to also said it should be available. He was unsure as to why it wasn't available and that was all he could offer. We really would have liked a definitive answer and also think that this is an option that consumers would appreciate.

PowerChute shows current status, but not the "Load on Battery Backup" as the demo does

One other minor quirk of PowerChute is how it defaults to the Help->About screen when you open it up. It would make more sense to us to default to the current status screen instead.

PowerChute lets you change a few parameters such as the high and low limits for your AC voltage. If the voltage drops below the low limit or spikes above the high limit, the battery backup will intervene. It also lets you select if you want your UPS to preserve as much battery power as possible or keep your computer on as long as possible in the event of a power outage.

You can also select to enable or disable the audio alerts as well as disable them during certain hours of the day, for instance at night while you are sleeping.