You should unplug your computer when it rains.
Right now it is raining. And thundering. And lightning.
This reminds me of a recent admit. A computer comes in and its owner reports something along the lines of: “There was this thunderstorm and now I can’t connect to the Internet.”
The reason was because the modem was dead like a doornail. This was very likely the result of a surge, not along the powerlines, but along the telephone lines. While the telephone company does have lightning arresting equipment on their lines, it can only do so much. And it takes so very little to burn out a modem.
I don’t have accurate figures on it, but I suspect that well over a third of “spontaneous” hardware failures are becuase of poor power conditions. Of those malfunctions half of them are dead modems. Such things can happen on the sunniest and nicest days too (remember the great blackout of 2003?)
So the moral of this story is, unless you have quick and easy access to replacement computer parts, you should turn off and unplug your computer when there are thunderstorms. Unplug the modem or high-speed too. Your computer will thank you.
[...] ers — Dan Siemon @ 0934 Reading Bob’s blog entry about lightening over here made me think about lightening and DSL modems. Bob’s quite right about computers most often g [...]
Pingback by coverfire.com » Lightening and DSL — 2004/6/15 @ 13:34
An APC BackUPS Office BF350CS uninteruptable power supply bar + antisurge w/tel might also be worth the investment… ;)
Comment by Mike — 2004/7/6 @ 13:15