Gadgetory

you know if you think about it powering your electronics is a lot like cooking a waffle just the right amount of heat will give you a delicious breakfast item you can code in maple syrup but too much and you'll end up with a charred pile of crap so similarly the sensitive equipment inside your PC home theater gaming console or whatever else needs a certain amount of electricity to run properly and too much will cause malfunctions or even destroy it and tirely so the power that comes out of your outlet on your wall is actually susceptible to voltage surges so that is why many people use surge protectors to keep their stuff safe from nasty electrical mishaps so then how do these work and what can they actually protect against it might be helpful to first understand what a surge protector isn't it is not the same as a regular power strip which provides no form of surge protection or a suppression or anything like that it is not the same as an uninterruptible power supply or UPS which provides emergency backup power during an outage and it is not the same as a power conditioner which can clean up mild interference that causes electrical noise if the power running to your home isn't the best instead a surge protector does exactly what it says it protects against voltage surges which happen whenever there's an unintended change in electrical charge somewhere on the circuit that's going to your power outlet because voltage is basically just a difference in charge that allows current to flow so too much voltage can cause too much current which can fry your electronics although surges are often associated with lightning strikes the most frequent culprit is actually power-hungry appliances though things like bad wiring and problems with the power grid itself can also cause surges so then how does a surge protector help whenever it detects a surge it actually shunts the extra electricity through a semiconducting material to a grounding wire which connects to that third prong on your plug this will send excess voltage back to the return line in the building's wiring which might trip a circuit breaker but won't damage whatever is plugged into the surge protector but before you rush out to buy one remember that all surge protectors have limitations most importantly they don't last forever every surge protector is rated for a certain number of joules a measurement of energy that it can absorb and once a certain number of joules hit your surge protector it won't offer any more protection and hardly anything will save you from a really strong power surge such as from a nearby lightning strike well gee Linus okay then how do I even know what to look for there are so many kinds that try to lure me in with fancy packaging and promises that they'll protect me from the hammer of Thor or whatever well first off Thor's hammer is actually a physical object and not really anything to do with electricity and second of all make sure you get one that is certified by underwriters laboratories or you will a consulting company that tests electronics equipment there are a lot of cheapo options out there that haven't been independently tested and may not actually protect anything also pay attention to the clamping voltage which is what the surge protector will reduce the voltage to although the power that comes out of a North American outlet is a hundred and twenty volts most electronics can actually deal with small surges on their own so anything with a clamping voltage below 400 volts is probably fine and as I mentioned earlier you'll also want a protector that's rated for a high number of joules so it will last longer and protect against larger surges 600 is a good place to start but there are plenty of units that offer much more protection then finally many manufacturers will replace fried equipment up to a certain dollar amount so make sure you read the fine print carefully so that you don't end up losing you know half a million bucks of stuff that you had plugged into your surge protector and have to haul all that stuff to the scrapyard but that kind of thing can be good to watch out for as well and you know what else is good to watch out for videos on lynda.com that's where you can go if you want to watch and learn from top experts who are passionate about teaching their subject matter what kind of subject matter you might ask great question all kinds of stuff photography video editing business I'm sure there's other things that I'm doing this off the top of my head I'm sure we're listing things on the screen under me you can browse course transcripts and follow along you can search for an answer skip to that point in the video you can download the videos to your mobile device so you don't actually have to have an active data connection to watch them you can share your playlists with friends so you guys can follow the same Learning Path if you want basically it's freaking awesome so if you're looking to upgrade your hobby 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