I’m not exactly happy with APC, the maker of SmartUPS’s this weekend. They made me do a whole lot of extra driving and house cleaning. Let me explain…
My new computer draws more power and my wife sugegsted we get a bigger UPS, no problem, or so I think. We run to MicroCenter, get the UPS, bring it home, and it fails saying it can’t see it’s own battery. Everything looks find outside and in, so back to the store, and without any incident the manager of returns reproduces the problem and happily gives me a new one, which we test right then and there, determines works, and I’m back home. That’s four 40 mile trips, all for one UPS.
The good news is, I hook it up — it works. So, I take the old one and put it one my wife’s machine. However, now there’s a new problem. They gave me some business class software instead of a personal version, and I’m too lazy to dig the original CDs out of the closet when I have a perfectly good Internet connection and can download it in seconds. Only problem is, APC wants to you register, give all kinds of personal info, which I did, only to discover their registration and download process was broken. So, it was off to tech support — which, I suspect will be less than helpful with a dash of unsympathetic. Here’s the letter, no kidding, as it went out to them:
I've upgraded UPSs, putting a huge ass one on my machine and dumping the small shitty one onto my wife's.... Now I've got two friggin' problems:1) The huge-ass UPS came with the business edition and wants me to install agents, servers, and a console. What the f...?!? I just wanna have the thing shut down nicely if I lose power, not alert Norad.
2) I'm trying to download the simple PowerChute software for the old UPS because I'm too lazy to dig out the CDs. You have any idea how many shoes my wife has in there? Only problem is, the SU700NET seems to be discontinued, and I can't find a download for it. Or, well, yes, I can... only it won't let me use _this_ user account, you know, the one I'm writing this support incident thingy with? And, when I do try to register, it just sits there. Much like I do when a box of shoes falls off the shelf and hits me in the head.
What happened to the days when APC was the no-brainer-it-just-worked solution?
Well, you know what? I can't get the software to download. So now I got to go into that closet. Shit, I hate shoes. I know you recycle batteries, will you take shoes, too? I just want my UPS to work.