Thunderstorms and Your Computer

ByMike Moffit

It’s that time of year when we seem to start getting more and more thunderstorms. If you’re one of the many people that runs their computers, whether it be a laptop or a desktop, without a surge protector, you probably get a little nervous every time the forecast calls for lightning. With a surge protector, you can stop worrying. You can buy a surge protector with just one outlet or up to 6 or 7 or 8 outlets. Certain ones are even color coded so you can easily determine which plug goes to which piece of electronics. Another neat feature that certain surge protectors also have is the outlet for protecting phone and fax lines. They are well worth the buy. Click the links below to view various surge protectors from Small Dog Electronics:

Pro Surge 450 Single Outlet Surge Protector

Kensington SmartSockets 6 Outlet Surge Protector w/ Phone

Kensington Guardian 7 Outlet Surge Protector

Unfortunately, the 8 outlet surge protector by Kensington doesn’t yet have it’s description up on our website, but it also has color coded plugs with tags to label the cords, as well as phone line protection.

Another thing to think about that goes along with power outages is a UPS system. UPS, Uninterruptable Power Supply, provides backup battery power for your computer so you have time after the power goes out to save what you were working on and quit so that data is not lost.

An example of a UPS is the Tripp Lite BC Pro 1050 UPS

To find other UPS systems and Surge Protectors, visit www.smalldog.com.

Similar Posts

  • 3D Gaming with Parallels

    This weekend I tried out the new Parallels 3.0 and Hitman: Codename 47. I remember back when I bought my first computer this…

  • PRAM, PRAM, THANK YOU MA'AM

    by David@Smalldog.com Having display issues? Something funky happening that restarting or repairing permissions doesn’t fix? When all else fails, zap the PRAM. PRAM…

  • iPod touch vs Apple TV

    The iPod touch was announced last September to moderate fanfare. Described as an iPhone without the phone (also without a camera, speaker, or…

  • AppleCare…To the Rescue

    While Apple’s products have significantly lower rates of failure than a lot of their competition, things do go wrong from time to time. When I got my iPhone 4S at launch, it would occasionally restart itself. At first, I thought nothing of it, considering I was coming from an Android device that rebooted itself so often that it might as well have been saying, “Hey, just in case you forgot you customized your splash screen, here it is again!”

    A couple of weeks ago, my phone didn’t just restart itself, but became a useless brick until I gave it a hard reset while plugged in. A quick Google search revealed this issue to be a symptom of hardware failure known in the diagnosis log as “panic.plist.” I checked my diagnosis log and there it was, three “panic.plist” occurrences in the past week. After a brief phone call with AppleCare, I was given the choice of sending the phone back to them and waiting close to a week for a replacement or to have a $730 hold placed on my credit card while they sent me a new phone overnight. As I didn’t have another phone to use, I opted for the latter.

    Normally, to have a phone sent overnight would cost $30 but because I had AppleCare, the fee was waived. Cut to today; the hold has been lifted and I have a shiny new iPhone that has yet to give me an issue. Granted, I was within the original one year warranty, but had this happened after that first year, I would be scavenging Craigslist for a cheap replacement. Thanks, AppleCare–I owe you one.