Resources for the Washington DC area

Dell Inspiron 1200 Notebook Computer

Be sure to protect your laptop investment with some important accessories. A good bag for carrying it around is a must. One that goes beyond regular bags is the TOM BIHN.

When your laptop is plugged into the wall, it's vulnerable to damage from power surges. A surge protector is a good idea. Even better is am Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). These have big batteries that the computer can run on for a while if the power goes out. They even have software to shut your computer down and preserve unsaved data as much as possible. Some come with insurance to reimburse if your computer does get zapped. If you use a phone modem to connect to the internet, the phone wire should be plugged into a surge protector. Destroyed modems from lightning storms are actually fairly common.

If you want the absolute greatest protection of your data, you can buy an external hard drive that backs up your data. Some come with software to automatically update backing up new files. These hard drives easily connect to your computer via a plug in USB cable.

July 2005