Common ways to Kill a PC

How is your computer doing these days? No problems? Nothing that happens ‘every once in a while’? Well you’re either very lucky; you have a brand new computer; or you have a Mac!
Before I start, let me say this – just like people, computers do have a life span. The average useful life of a computer system, the time in which it is still useful and capable of running the software of the day, is five years tops. Hard drives have an even shorter life span of only three years or so! But, of course we all know that ‘stuff happens’ to our computer. Here is a list of the most common ways we can ‘kill’ our computer.
The Power Supply (PSU)
When a power supply fails, it often sends electric jolts through the rest of the system, killing (and sometimes burning) your valuable computer components. Unfortunately, many power supplies are manufactured by no name companies with no quality control.
Do this:
Just two words: Brand Name. The best way (not a sure way, but the best way) to avoid a power supply incident is to buy a power supply from a reputable company that specializes in manufacturing them. Also consider purchasing some sort of UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply).
Power Surges
Lightning strikes can cause huge electrical surges in the power and phone lines entering your house. Over longer distances this gets filtered out, but at close range it can be devastating. Often modems and other phone line devices are more vulnerable to this than other computer components that depend on the better-shielded power lines. Of course, if your modem is built into your motherboard, it’s not looking good for you.
Do this:
Here in Bali we see frequent lightning strikes! So get a good quality UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) that also monitors and conditions power and has a phone line/network cable surge protector. Even better is to unplug your computer and the phone line when a big storm approaches. (I lost my internal modem several weeks ago!)
USB Device Mishaps
We all love our new USB Thumb drives. Those little thumb sized storage devises that hold many megabytes or even gigabytes of data. The problem with USB is that it transfers more power than most other I/O interfaces, so a short circuit can have disastrous consequences for the rest of your computer if the motherboard is not properly outfitted with board level fuses. Another possible cause is that the ‘hot pluggable’ (you can plug and unplug them from your computer without turning the computer off) nature of USB interfaces means that they are plugged in and unplugged much more than other I/O devices, leading to increased wear and tear and more chance of an electrical mishap.
Do this:
Actually, there’s no easy way to avoid this besides not using USB devices, which is not something we’d recommend. Taking a little time and care when plugging and unplugging your devices is probably the best path to safety. My recommendation is to put a USB hub on the desk, or use a USB port extension cable when plugging in devices frequently.
(For even more info, see: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1720)
UPDATE on TelkomSPEEDY
I’ve gotten several emails from readers (thank you). There are several things to know about TelkomSPEEDY. One is that there is a limit to the amount of information you can download each month. It is more than enough for you to surf the internet. However, if you want to download music (MP3s) or movies, it may cost you extra. The limit included in the base price is 75MB (Megabytes) per month. The other thing I’ve been told is that there have been more than a few problems with TelkomSPEEDY, technical ‘bugs’ that have caused outages, especially at night and on weekends. So thank you to the folks that emailed me with this updated information. Have a question or problem? Write me at BaliPCAdvisor@GMail.com. I’ll try and answer as soon as I can.
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