A Surge Protector is Worth Its Weight in Gold

When I made the trip to Best Buy to pick up my computer system, the salesman tried to get me to buy everything under the sun, insisting that I needed all these things to have my computer run properly. I am not the most technologically savvy person, so I brought my brother, who is pretty sharp with that kind of stuff, and he told me that the one thing I wanted to make sure that I had, even if I bought nothing else, was a surge protector.

A few weeks later, I found out why. I live in North Texas, where we have a lot of thunderstorms. I do most of my work on my computer, and I was in college at the time. I was right in the middle of writing a research paper for one of my classes when the power went out.

Fortunately, I had been saving every few minutes, which most Texans learn to do with the storms we have, but I was still worried about the possibility that the hard drive or the computer itself was ruined. Then I remembered that I had gotten a surge protector, and realized that it would be OK.

Our television was on at the time, and it would not work at all after the power outage. It did not have a surge protector. When we regained power, I turned my computer back on and picked up almost right where I had left off.

On another occasion, and I still can't believe this happened, a guy driving down one of the major thoroughfares from our house hit an electricity pole at about 50 miles an hour and knocked out the power for about six blocks in the surrounding area.

I was now working for a living, and was in the middle of writing four stories, all of which were up at the same time and all of which were nearly finished. I was living in a different house at this point, and my brother was the one who had set up my computer system, so I quickly called him and asked him about the surge protector and whether or not he had hooked that up.

I was very relieved to learn that he had, and once again, when power was restored, I turned on my computer and retrieved my documents and had very little work to duplicate.

A surge protector is worth its weight in gold for me because it has gotten me out of a tremendous bind on two or three occasions. You never know when the power is going to go out, so it is probably best to get one if you don't have one. You might be grateful some day that you did.