Customer Reviews

Belkin F6H500-USB UPS with Shutdown Software (8 Outlets, 500VA)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Don't care that it's not USB or XP-compliant. I am using it as just a UPS and it really paid for itself during that recent power outage in the Northeast.

I was online and I noticed the room lights went out. Yet I was still connected because my PC was running on the UPS. I was able to remain online for about 20 minutes whereby I read news stories about the power outage, as it was happening.

A nice feature is that it has 8 outlets, not the customary 6.

It is very heavy - I was very surprised that Amazon offered free shipping on it.

I have two of these and they both work fine for my needs. One is plugged into Tivo and the DirectTV box because they take so friggin long to boot up after an outage, and the other is connected to my Sun Fire V120 server. Admittedly, this isn't a high-end server, and I had to splice together an RJ-45 to Cat-5 serial cable to install the Unix daemon (available on their website), but it serves my needs perfectly. None of the bricks have ever run out of power, so the battery life is certainly adequate for an average computer.

If the lack of a USB cable is a problem for some, perhaps they don't understand that serial connections are older and therefore much more reliable than USB connections. USB is adequate for MP3 players, but it is too unreliable for a utility that's meant to protect your system from damage.

This is the third Belkin SERIAL UPS I have purchased. (...)You need to set up the Software and do some tweaking to your liking, and they work like a charm.
Now, I just purchased this unit and it works great just as expected on a fully loaded machine.
I also have some APC UPS units- I'll take the Belkins any day over them.
Just FOLLOW DIRECTIONS, set up your Software, and listen to that sexy sounding lady with the English accent tell you the status of your UPS while it's safely shutting down your Computer...Now that's living! :-)

the belkin 500 ups is Great!,if you have a 300 watt computer like my Gateway 700xl,the UPS can provide a 7 minute power,and with it's USB connection,you can program it to call you in your phone number,or e-mail you that the power is gone, you can program it even to Shut down,stand by or hibernate your computer.

--I Reccomend you to buy it.

OK, so I have the previous 450 VA model, but it just failed on me causing a power outage. The battery failed, and power just went out. The next day, the battery bad indicator starting beeping but TOO LATE. For an uninterruptible power supply to cause a power outage is just unacceptable.

Everything I have gotten from Belkin has been poorly designed. I replaced with an APC. They seem to have a clue.

Had two of these at work crap out and die within a year of each other. All our UPS units are Belkin and we've had issues, greater or smaller, with all of them. These F6H500s in particular died with no warning, under no undue circumstances (lightning strike, etc) and when that happened there was absolutely nothing I could do with them. There was no self-test, no blinking lights. Dead. They became expensive 12-pound bricks.

I bought 12 (yes 12) of these to protect all my computers. The fact is that they all work really great if your gonna skip the software (although the software is what properly shuts the computer down before the battery dies). On every single one of them, the software will lose connection with the UPS after a few days rendering the software useless. The only way to fix this is to shut everything down, turn the ups off, unplug the ups for a minute, plug it back in and boot everything up again. This will give you a few more days. Being that I never shut my computers down, this sucks royally. It happens to ALL 12 on different machines so that confirms a design flaw in this unit. I look for a bios update to possibly fix the problem often, but no luck on belkins site. BUYERS BEWARE!!!!

If you care about USB (rather than serial) and you care about it 'just working' with your windows XP, then buy something else.

I got sent the one with a serial cable, and some terribly poor software.

I used windows XP's UPS control panel (power management) and I think I had to say it was an APC serial device.

No idea if it's doing the right thing - my confidence is low with this product.

However, if you don't mind serial, and running other s/ware - it's probably OK.

If you care about USB and XP compatibility, don't buy this.

Otherwise, go for it.