Surge Protectors - supplied by Unitech

You know,...it is really ironic, I have been working as an electronics technician since 1978 and a computer techo since 1983 and the item most brought in for repair item is the actual computer/mother board, and the conclusions are usually a mains spike that has "taken out" or rather destroyed the RAM and the CPU followed by a few other delicate chips.

Statistically speaking, one would have to say that the average consumer has not been educated in what the pit-falls are in the usage of mains operated equipment on the domestic and just how sensitive modern days' sophisticated and somewhat delicate electronics is to the effects of nasty surges / spikes and brown outs.

One really does not realise how important your computer and its valuable data is to you and your work or family until it's killed off by the mains !

Lightning would have to be, without a doubt, the prime killer of electronics, followed by mains spikes from welders, pool pumps, air conditioners and home appliances without question.

We at Unitech were stuck by lightning in 1995, where we had our " Brand New " entire five day old 11 extension phone system and P.A.B.X. was totally fried, it " lit up " like a xmas tree the EFTPOS and modem was cooked, our trusty A4000 computer's serial port and modem was " fried " as well as our fax machine and several small mains powered calculators not to mention our Canon 50 Sheets per minute Photo copier, which was fried and unable to be repaired. They were all replaced by insurance, but !...the inconvenience was not.

As a result of that damage then, we now have fuses and M.O.V's on all four incoming phone lines, the best protection we can apply and during the past three years, several fuses have blow or rather vaporised due to localised lightning strikes, thus saving our 11 extension P.A.B.X. phone system. Replacing fuses & M.O.V.s is a lot cheaper than replacing the entire phone system. Rules to follow: When a lightning storm approaches, remove all computers, faxes, modems from the mains, unplug modems from the phone lines and if you can, disconnect the complete phone system from any mains supply and the phone lines until the storm has passed.

That little "1995 lightning strike" cost us 185 hours of lost productivity, due to the lack of working equipment, not to mention the, loss of business potential from the phone system not working and the inconvenience of a non-working EFTPOS terminal for Credit Card sales, no internet connectivity, repairs to our Amiga A4000 serial port chips, replacing the fried modem, replacing three calculators, one was only two weeks old, a customer's computer minus his hard drive which we had just taken out about 2 mins before the lightning hit (was he lucky or what?).

Getting quotes to replace the fried items was a pain, filling in insurance claims and worst of all, back to using those time wasting hand written vouchers and not to neglecting the time taken in filling out lengthy insurance questionnaires and our company accountant figured that little stint cost us in excess of 45,000ドル in lost sales, productivity and some serious worrying downtime.    Insurance does not cover that.

Thankfully, we were insured and we were able to replace everything, however.. so much re-installing of windows stuff ! along with all your CDs of software minus their config files, which you have to re-set .... what a pain !

That aside, now just imagine this, you have been on your computer for 5 hours straight doing important Business plan or even a University assignment, you have typed in 150 pages and are about to save it all, when "ZAPPO " while you are taking a coffee break, you get a nasty surge on your mains from a guy welding next door, or a spike from an air conditioner that has a "suspected faulty thermal switch", think that it can't happen ?.... don't think too long about that, it will happen, it is only a matter of when !

Spikes or surges can happen several times a day , a simple thing like someone blowing the fuse on the circuit your computer is on any one, can often take out your computer, Ram is usually the first to be affected as it is more voltage sensitive, followed by dearer components such as CPU's. This is the type of scenario that would send a peaceful sane person into absolute instant rage......." yikes !!" OH NO !..." I have lost my computer "..." what blew up ?... and what's that burning smell ?.. Oh No !!!..... Where's all my Data gone to....?" ...... Does this sound all too familiar?. Please , do consider the safer protective alternatives , think about the lost time, the lost productivity and the lost valuable data, your data !.

If the user was smart, they would have been using a hi-quality mains surge protector device which would have "cut in" and absorb the spikes , the exact microsecond in time it took to disrupt the mains supply to that computer.

Consider an even worse case, you are saving data to your IDE drive and there is a major surge, your hard drive is now an expensive paper weight ! If you will have damaged the master boot file, the registry hive or on an Amiga, the rigid disk block file on your IDE hard drive you may go through hours of re-installing your files just to make it work, or even worse......... if you never backed it all up prior to the crash ! I think you get the message.