Installation of the Belkin Regulator Pro Gold USB was very easy. Plug in all the appropriate power cables, and hold down the power button! After a period of 2-4 hours, it will be fully charged and ready to fend off those nasty power problems!

Connecting the Regulator Pro Gold USB was equally uneventful. Once the USB cable was plugged in, my Windows 2000 system automatically detects it and prepares it for the installation of Belkin's UPS management software, Sentry BullDog, which is compatible with a whole range of OS's, from all the different flavours of Windows to the different flavours of UNIX, including Linux, to Novell Netware and even Mac OS 9! This enables the user to use the full set of features that are in the Regulator Pro Gold USB on almost any system-with USB support.

Sentry BullDog is, surprisingly, loaded with features that will show you the status of your Belkin Regulator Pro Gold USB in any way possible, and allows the user to configure a whole bunch of options. One of the configuration panels, shown below, allows users to choose which action to perform under individual situations, such as a power outage or when the battery is running low. My only complaint with the software is that it might be too complex and loaded with too many features for the novice user. Other then that, Belkin's Sentry BullDog is a very powerful and flexible tool to manage a user's Regulator Pro Gold USB from virtually any platform imaginable.

Along with Sentry BullDog, the installation CD also includes the files needed to set up Windows 2000 and XP's native support for UPS battery backups. With this installed, the user can manage how their computer behaves when running on the battery backup, and Windows also will add an icon to your tasktray to show the battery level, much like with a notebook, when the computer goes into battery power mode.

The Test
To test out how the Regulator Pro Gold USB handles power outage situations, which is one of the main reasons why I opted for a UPS battery backup, I simply unplugged it from the wall outlet after it had fully charged. I had my LCD monitor and Athlon 650MHz system plugged into two of the battery backup jacks.

Sentry BullDog handled this situation very well, as the moment the power was lost, it alerted me with a message box on the screen, and again every 1 minute or so, that there was a power failure. It also alerts the user through the computer's sound system in the form of a pleasant female voice with a British accent (gotta have that accent!), which I thought was a very nice touch on Belkin's part. Of course, for users of other UPS battery backups, they'll feel right at home with the constant beeping coming from the Regulator Pro Gold USB.

I did, however, notice that Sentry BullDog was reporting the wrong battery level-when the Windows 2000 battery meter, which I'm assuming is correct because of how it drops in a linear fashion, reported a battery level of 92%, Sentry BullDog had been reporting a battery level of 67% for the past 5 minutes! This could be confusing, and stressful, in some cases, to some users if they realize that their battery life had just dropped by 33% in only less than a minute, when it was actually only about 3-5%.

The battery life reached 80% after about 25 minutes, which is very impressive and shows that Belkin's estimate of 45 minutes was a very conservative number. At this time, the Sentry BullDog began its shutdown sequence (the battery level for this action can be changed to allow for a longer operation time; 30% is what I use to leave plenty time for the system to shutdown)--strangely, it gets the battery level right this time. The shutdown sequence conducted by Sentry BullDog was very elegant, as it went as far as to save all open documents that were not saved already into temporary locations on the hard drive to prevent any data loss before it tells the system to shut down properly. After powering back up the system again, Sentry BullDog reported details of the shutdown process such as which document was saved and to where. This is a very pleasant feature and I can already see its usefulness.

On to: Conclusion