by Marc Phillippe Babineau

Created on: January 11, 2009

If you have a home office, then the chances are that you have important information on your computer, and the longer your computer is down (in the shop for repairs, etc.), the longer you do without a pay check. The average home office would have a computer system, either laptop, desktop, or most popularly, both, a printer, wireless router and WiFi cards, external storage drives, maybe a stereo system and a gaming system to blow off some steam. That is a lot of money to put at risk, but for the purchase of a $60 or slightly higher power bar with fuse protection.

A fuse protection power bar usually comes with a guarantee that if you lose up to half a million dollars in computer gear due to power fluctuations while using their power bar, they will fully refund all of your losses, no need to go through your insurance company and incur rate increases. A decent power bar can cost anywhere from $60 to upwards of $350, and, as in most things in life, the more expensive the power bar, the better the protection that you receive.

In some more delicate systems, a urge of little more than a few watts of power can fry integrated circuitry. Picture Stephen King, just finishing his best hardcover book yet, and having the lights go out and a small fire erupt inside his computer's frame as a lighting flash lights up the night. The fire would start in the power supply and quickly fry the motherboard and possibly the memory, and/or any of the installed cards. There goes his masterpiece, unless of course he has made regular back ups, and keeps the back ups in a fire-proof safe, in another section of the house.

Or, if our friendly, scary scribe would have simply bought a good power bar, then the minor surge in electrical power would have been sensed by the power bar, and the power output would have been either limited or dropped, thereby saving the computer as well as the information and programs stored and saved within the computer. It only makes frugal sense to purchase a power bar that is guaranteed to protect your delicate electronics, I-Pod included, with an almost unlimited financial guarantee for any gear lost to power surges while using the power bar.

Now, not too many home offices have $100,000 to $500,000, or even $2,000,000 worth of computer gear (they will do an inspection and investigation before paying out any, say, slightly exaggerated claims. However, the more money that you do have invested in your home office, the more prudent it becomes to buy a good power bar.

Any home office power and equipment protection tips would not be complete without steering the user away from the cheaply and shoddily constructed inferior power bars, power strips and power blocks. There are power bars that can be purchased at dollar stores, and these are to be avoided at all costs for powering any electronic or computer related gear. The same goes for the power bars in the sales bins at Wal-Mart and Zellers, as they are meant for powering a couple of lamps, or a toaster oven and a popcorn maker, not sophisticated electronic circuitry.

Theoretically, an argument could be made that at least 5 to 10 percent of your computer gears' cost should be spent on home office power and equipment protection. Doing without your computer system for 2 to 3 weeks would be disastrous for most people who work out of a home office. However, if your home office is set up just for personal reasons, and is not the primary bread-winner for the household, then you could take your chances with a cheaper power bar, or simply plugging everything into wall outlets.

However, the thing about taking your chances is that sooner or later you are going to lose.

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