Moving on to some hardware issues now. We are living in dangerous times now here in California. (And if you believe the news, other parts of the country will have the same problems soon) I am referring to the dangers to computers from power outages. As mentioned yesterday, power surges are disastrous to electronic equipment (not just computers, but TV’s, fax machines, monitors, copiers, scanners, etc). So, here is the next rule, (Rule #2) at a minimum make sure that you have your computer plugged into a surge protector. Don’t by the cheap one from the hardware store. Buy the $50.00 dollar one from your local computer store. Good ones come with an insurance policy that will replace your equipment if the surge protector fails.

Of course a surge protector will do nothing to keep you computing if the power fails. For that you will need a device known as a UPS, or Uninterruptible Power Supply. This is a device with a battery inside and circuitry to convert battery power to something your computer can use. The way it works is simple, you plug your computer into the UPS and you plug the UPS into the wall. When the power fails, you have enough power to gracefully save your work and shut the computer down. You can get a UPS for under $200.00, but the more expensive ones give you more time than the cheaper ones.

So, rule #3 is to buy and USE a surge protector or a UPS. The good news is that if you go the UPS route, a surge protector is built in! (UPS= Uninteruptable Power Supply)
You need to back up your system. Repeat after me…I need to back up my system. But you knew that didn’t you? I’ll bet that only a very small percentage of people do that. And that is just waiting for disaster to happen. There is any number of ways to lose your data. In fact there are so many ways for that to happen that the techies like to say “It’s not if you will lose your data, it’s when”. There are lots of ways to back up data. To learn more, please see my post on backing up.