You by a great computer, nice monitor and printer and spend hopefully $25 on a good quality surge protector to protect your investment, right. The surge protector is rated in Joules (said just like “jewels”), which is the amount of surge protection it has. The more joules the better the protection.
Each time the system gets hit with a surge from a brownout or blackout the surge gets diverted into a cool little thing called a Metal Oxide Varistor (MOV) which is what protects the equipment you have plugged in. If you have, say a 1000 joules surge protector and you get a 150 joule surge, you’ll only have 850 left, and so on. Once your joules are depleted, the device is basically a power strip and needs to be replaced. The problem is there is rarely an indicator telling you it has been hit too many times!
A good rule of thumb is to replace your surge protectors every two to three years with new, quality devices. If not, you stand to spend more on costly repairs and downtime on the systems that you would getting a new surge protector. Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish!
For workstations, consider replacing surge protectors with an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) which will keep your computer working through a brownout or blackout. The great thing about a UPS is that if you are in the middle of a document and the power goes out, you can save your work to your desktop and if it is an extended outage, do an orderly shutdown which prevents all sorts of issues. When the power does resume, you can power back on and move the document to the normal place.
For help with product suggestions for your particular situation, please contact us at Premier IT Support at (775) 276-5544. We are always here to help!