A basic surge protector uses a capacitor. Once the capacitor is at capacity it becomes a basic extension cord. Charles Jones wrote: I had 3 PCs running 24/7, one of them was on a UPS, and the other 2 had surge protectors. They all equally failed. I think the house just hated technology. :-) Kevin Brown wrote: Consider yourself lucky. At my old house, there was something funky with the power, because I went through about 8 power supplies, even good expensive ones. At the end I was buying cheapo $29 cases from Frys just to get the power supply out of them (and then recycled the case). My new house isn't quite as bad, but I've gone through 3 power supplies here so far, including one that literally exploded and shot a cloud of plasma-like fire out of it. Talk about an eye-opener at 3am :) You would have been better off spending all that money on a line conditioner/surge protector. I have a line conditioner at my place and it occasionally indicates a spike or drop in the line voltage and corrects for it. Haven't lost a power supply yet that couldn't be anything other than the result of basic age. --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss ------------------------ Keith Smith (480) 584-4772 PHP Programming --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.