From Rick's Daily Tips

Several people have brought Brian computer components that were friend by recent lightening storms.  Protect  your electronics.  This excellent article from Rick's Daily Tips explains why.  One of the best protections is to unplug your electronics during an electrical storm or when going away on a vacation.

​Question from Shelby:  I bought a new computer the other day.
The salesman told me I won’t need to plug it into a surge protector because the power supply automatically protects it from over-voltage.

Is he right? 

I don’t want my computer to get damaged by lightning but I also don’t want to buy something I don’t need.

I’ve always heard that we do need to use surge protectors, but now I’m not sure.

Rick’s answer: Shelby, I could give you a short answer to your question (it would be NO!!!), but I’ll explain why you do need to plug your computer into some sort of surge suppression device.
The electronic components inside all computers are very easily damaged by power surges and lighting strikes, and that includes the power supply itself.

While it’s true that most computer power supplies do provide some protection against small, short duration power fluctuations, they are NOT designed to withstand a strong power surge or lightning strike.

What’s more, even surge suppressors themselves aren’t immune from power surges and lightning strikes.

They are often either destroyed outright if the surge is strong enough or weakened to the point where they no longer provide any useful protection against future surges, leaving you with a false sense of security that your equipment is being protected.

That’s why if you want the most protection possible from your surge suppressors, you should consider replacing them every time your local power line takes a direct hit from a lightning strike, even if they “appear” to be working just fine.

Bottom line: You really do need to keep all of your computer gear plugged into a quality surge protector at all times.

You also need to replace your surge protectors after your local power grid takes a a direct lightning strike (i.e. when your home’s power goes off during a thunder storm).

If you know how to choose a good one you can buy a surge protector at a local retail store.

However, if you might find it helpful to read the user reviews for the surge protectors sold on Amazon. They have an excellent selection for you to choose from.
I hope this helps, Shelby. Good luck!

There are several reasons you might want to clone your hard drive, one is for a backup. While not an ideal solution in some ways, a clone will allow the substitution of the cloned drive for the live drive, if the live drive fails, by simply swapping the drives.
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That sounds great except the clone is date specific, so it you made the clone 6 months ago, then you computer will be back up and running…as it was 6 months ago.
 
Another reason to clone a drive would be if you are going to swap out your old, mechanical hard drive for a faster SSD-Solid State Drive. I make clones for that reason mostly.
 
The software I typically use is Macrium Reflect, the free version. It’s fairly simple to use and works almost every single time. You can download it HERE. 
 
Another option is to use Clonezilla. It’s also free, and might be a better option as it works on both Macs and PCs, using a thumb drive to run. Instructions for that are HERE. How to Ghost a Hard Drive (with Pictures) - wikiHow

Okay, so here’s a pretty good one. This week’s tech tip is about speeding up your Windows PC. It basically does what I do when trying to help speed up a slow computer. There are a few things that can help, like decluttering. I try and add memory if I have some laying around. I also suggest getting an SSD if your pc still has a mechanical hard drive.

Read this article HERE. 

It has step by step instructions for removing programs, slimming down your pc startup list, and more.

If the issue is Internet, then that’s different. Out here (Abiquiu), there aren't many options. As for speeding up your internet, there really isn’t anything you can do to your existing internet that can speed it up. There are scammy devices available that say they will double your current internet speed, or more! They will not. If you are using Windstream DSL, you are basically at their mercy as to how fast it is and how often it works. Lately, it’s not been great.
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Technically, there may be some things you could do, like change the DNS server IP address in your router. Do you really want to do that? It may help a little bit, or not. If the issue is WiFi in your particular location, you may be able to do something about that, but if your internet is already minimal to your home, moving closer to your WiFi router won’t make it any faster overall.

It’s hard to start this article as there is so much wrong about our electronic world. I am so invested in it, and I generally LOVE electronics. It’s also a bit of a scam.
My first smartphones were HTC. I had no love of Apple, nor of Android. My HTC phone was simply an excellent smartphone on the Android platform, and it served me well. When the battery started underperforming, I bought a new, bigger battery with a special back cover to fit the HTC. The back cover snapped off, out popped the battery, and bing bang boom, in went a thicker, longer life battery, with a new back cover to accommodate it.

Samsung phones often (always? I dunno) have easily replaceable batteries. I don’t know about other brands, but Apple has never done that. As Apple hires what are arguably the best designers on the planet, then it seems like it’s something they could do with their product line if they wanted to.

I like Apple products in general, so I’m not bashing them. Apple isn’t the only corporation in the world making products that can’t have a battery easily replaced, and therein lies a problem. As consumers, we ‘encourage’ the bad behavior of manufacturers by buying their ‘poorly’ designed products that force us to toss the older ones and get a newer one, just because it’s not worth paying to replace the dead battery.
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They aren’t really ‘poorly’ designed because they are designed exactly as they are meant to be, which supports the business, and not the consumer. To read an interesting article on that, look HERE.