Is APC PowerChute necessary with Win7?  

sygnus21, take a look at the Win7 Advanced Power Panel here. It shows that the Win7 UPS control can take action on a configurable threshold (I expanded the Critical Threshold option in this image). So the thing I'm wondering about is: how does Windows know when the UPS is at 10% battery remaining versus 15% versus whatever the value is? Doesn't that mean that the UPS must be signaling its status to the OS?

tony22 said:

Bob, I try to run a relatively lightweight instance of Win7. Since I knew Win XP had an actual UPS utility (which I had used), I was hoping the capability in Win7 would be as useful. I found the utility in XP to be sufficient for my APC UPS. If Win7 has an embedded capability to do something well enough, then for me the tradeoff in using a manufacturer's software usually comes down to asking if I really need to do whatever else it does. Maybe "bloatware" was too strong a term, but I wasn't sure what to think when I saw three separate installations from a 100+ MB file to control a UPS (server, agent, console). Since it looked like the Advanced Power Profile Battery options had the ability to act on Low and Critical notifications, I was hoping that meant there was enough bidirectional communication so that Windows would be getting this info from the SmartUPS. I guess that was assuming too much.

And yes, I do now use WMP12 to burn disks. Not hard at all, reliable, and free. The days of using Nero have since passed in that department.

Fair enough.....just wondering, would suggest that you check out CDBurnerXP instead of WMP12 and Foxit reader instead of builtin PDF reader but it is up to you although with 6gb (did I read your spec correctly?) I really can't see any reason to keep the instance small but I assume that it is a personal choice. Have a nice day.

Tony22, those Win 7 battery options are for a laptop battery. Windows has no way of detecting how it is connected to power on a desktop. As has been stated, PowerChute software is good and reliable using very little space and resources. I have used various iterations of it for about 10 years.

I need to correct, if the USB from the UPS is attached to the PC it gives an indication of whether you are on battery or power grid.