Should I Be Worried?

Over the last year or so I've been having problems with my iMac G5: it shuts off suddenly every now and then. It hasn't been consistent and it hasn't grown in frequency so I wasn't so worried about it being the dreaded issue of a bad logic board. And months would go by without any sudden shutdowns, so I wasn't convinced it was anything more than my apartment's living room power circuit being a little wacky. Recently I ruled that one out after picking up an APC Back-UPS unit (which I think is a wise thing to have anyway... it gives you 20-40 minutes of back up power so your computer won't get killed during a power outage) and having the iMac shutdown on me within the first 5 minutes.

I finally discovered that it's a larger issue and Apple has a repair program for it. Thank goodness!! But after the last shutdown as I sat at my iMac working, I suddenly noticed a new menubar icon that I didn't put there. And it seemed vaguely familiar, as in I've seen it on my laptop before.

Given my power issues, this made me a little anxious. What power adapter?! Turns out, Apple's Energy Saver has its own built-in ability to manage the UPS so the menubar icon is activated because of that.

I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty cool. I don't have to deal with whatever horrid software APC would have me install. Now if only I could replace CanoScan with an Apple app...