Have had to fix disk permissions on the Mac Mini several times since getting it in January, but last night's outage left it unable to recognize Bluetooth or USB so booting into safe mode or single user mode is not possible. Looks like a UPS is necessary after a trip to the repair center. At least lap tops have a battery to save you during electricity disruptions.

All my Mac's (mini, iMac, MacPro) are behind a Ups.

Learned this lesson the hard way, like you...

I have never had any problems with my old iMac 24, even with the occasional power outage.

All my electronic & computer gear is behind a UPS - including the printer, TV and stereo!

UPS and surge protection is a good idea.

A normal outage doesn't break a Mac. Had it a few times, it just reboots and repairs the file system. Very stable. You may habe other issues, check your hardware.

But everybody should have a UPS anyway. i have power outages in Bangkok every week.

It wasn't the power outage that killed my Mac Pro, it was the surge that fried a main board as soon as the power returned.

It is looking like a hardware issue. I just turned it on and it appeared to be repairing permissions for about 20 minutes, then I got the apple symbol and thought "this is good." Ten seconds later, it restarted itself which is very abnormal. Now a blue screen for twenty minutes again.

I can't agree that Mountain Lion is stable though. My 8 year old MacBook that I am using to post this has never had any issues with booting up until the hard drive gave up a few months back. Everything was backed up with SuperDuper so I was back up and running with about 20 minutes of work and 5 hours of file copying. The Mac Mini in my five months of experience has had many odd issues.

My Mini 9 months old or so, and Mac Air about 18 month now, both fine (so far touch wood) ....

Even in the west I would never run a computer without UPS and surge protector .... first thing I think you should is get one and don't get a cheap one! .... (I use Belkin)

Two year old Mac mini, running Mtn. Lion - OSX 10.8.3. No issues with its operation.

Who doesn't have frequent power outages in Thailand, either from power shutdowns, or lightening strikes whacking the distribution equipment?

It wasn't the power outage that killed my Mac Pro, it was the surge that fried a main board as soon as the power returned.

That's easily prevented, with hindsight - blackout, unplug till power is on for 30 mins before restarting -

P.S. test your UPS occasionally - run computer on it, off the wall, before 'using' it; get an idea how the batteries are.

You may be surprised.

Speaking of UPS's. I bought one recently because I run on a generator. All the thing does is beep. I can't use it. My power runs at about 230 and runs through a stepup transformer before it hits the house. The "sales" person said it would run on a generator but I expect not. Any thoughts, aside from comments on the believing a sales person?

Sounds like the generator's output waveform is rough enough that it looks like a power outage to the UPS detection circuits. You might try running the line input to the UPS through a 1:1 isolation transformer from Amorn as that MIGHT make the waveform a bit more sinusoidal.

Yes T-dog, could well be an issue if it is an inverter type generator, our 'conventional' genset drive all three of our UPS's with no issues whatever.

It wasn't the power outage that killed my Mac Pro, it was the surge that fried a main board as soon as the power returned.

That's why I turn off all extension cables or unplug anything connected directly to the mains every time we have a power cut, Bangkok is worse than London during the Miners Strike.

Sent from my iPad using ThaiVisa app

Sounds like the generator's output waveform is rough enough that it looks like a power outage to the UPS detection circuits. You might try running the line input to the UPS through a 1:1 isolation transformer from Amorn as that MIGHT make the waveform a bit more sinusoidal.

Thanks. I do run it through a step up transformer and that smoothes it out some, but I guess not enough.