In WordPress Admin Area
Installed the "Batcache Manager" and "APC Object Cache" plugins using the Plugins ==> Add New option in the WordPress Admin Panel and didn't activate

created phpinfo.php in the web root of my webserver and called it via a browser

Contents of phpinfo.php

<?php
# call phpinfo
phpinfo();
?>

and checked for apc support. and got nadda.

Installed the APC module using the pecl search apc and pecl install apc-X.X.X with instructions from http://devzone.zend.com/1812/using-apc-with-php/

I chose the defaults while I was compiling.

add extension=apc.so to the php.ini and restart the webserver

Check the output of phpinfo.php again and now had apc.

discovered you don't "activate" the apc plugin but you have to copy the wp-content/plugins/apc/object-cache.php file to wp-content/ to get it working

copied wp-content/plugins/batcache/advanced-cache.php wp-content/ to activate batcache and checked to make sure define('WP_CACHE', true); is in wp-config.php

To check to see if it's working I copied lib/php/apc.php from my php install to a password protected folder for this site so I can see the cached objects. because I put it in the password proctected directory I disabled apc.php's internal password mechanism by setting "defaults('USE_AUTHENTICATION',0);"