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This should be common sense, but it bears repeating - Always use a good Uninterruptable Power Supply w/surge protection!

Here in central NY, we had a pretty strong frontal boundry come through and it sparked off some intense local storms. Robyn and I were watching a DVD in my room when we heard a really loud *kkkerrrraaacckk!!!!* with the bright flash. I swear it hit something close, but I couldn't find anything as it was 11:30pm. So the next morning my computer was off and wouldn't turn on. Check the UPS, and it had a solid yellow light. The manual doesn't give a reason for a steady yellow light, only a blinking one. So I pull it out and set up my spare, and all is good. I figured it had just run down on battery power, so I charged it overnight, and still nothing. I also have a breaker circuit that will not reset.

Turns out a bolt of lightning hit a large tree in front of my house, blew all the bark off a little pathway down approx 3/4th of the tree, made a nice little scorch mark where it jumped from the tree to the drop line for my cable/power, set the weatherhead on fire, blew all the insulation out of the sheath that covers the wires from the weatherhead down to the meter, and fused the afformentioned circuit.

So my UPS did it's job and took the hit instead of my computer! It even didnt' give me an error message when I turned it back on, so it must have shut the computer down (couldn't retrieve the log) before it kicked the bucket.

Bottom line - get a high quality UPS and make sure it's functioning! This could have been a lot worse, but I'm glad it wasn't!! My unit was a Belkin, F6C1100-UNV.

send that story to belkin. betcha they'd love it.