Bits'n'Bytes

Tip 18

If you don't have one yet, please get yourself a battery backup, or UPS, for your computer. Even if for no other reason than to make sure you have time to properly shut down your computer when the power goes out. Hitting the “off” button when your computer is in the middle of doing something important is one of the fastest and most common ways to ensure your computer doesn't run properly if and when it starts back up.

But, at the very least, people should have a surge protector on their computer.

Surge protectors protect your computer from exactly that. A power surge. Surges are usually created when normal power is restored to a circuit after being temporarily decreased. This decrease can be caused by lots of different things, including refrigerators, blow dryers, furnace motors and yes, falling branches. Because the lines in your house can only handle a given amount of power, when you turn on your blow dryer, the power dips slightly in the rest of the house as more is given to the dryer. When you turn it off, the power jumps back up to normal, and sometimes slightly above normal. Small spikes caused by appliances in your house are created by the dozen, every day. Externally caused spikes, like ravens or tree branches, are far less common, but can cause more damage. During lightning storms, unplug your computers, as no retail surge protector in the world is going to help your computer if your house is hit by lightning.

Thanks for reading!

Until next week, I'm Computer Dave