How do I protect my laptop from power surges?
Solution 1:
Try the Belkin BZ103050vTVL Mini Surge Protector/Dual USB Charger, which has great design and functionality. It protects your laptop from surges and at the same time provides useful USB ports to charge your other gadgets. It's quite portable for what it can do.
A review at Amazon said : "...equipment I used overnight every day for two weeks had no problem from the potentially erratic India power." (sic)
See Belkin's list of official distributors in India for availability. (Don't click on the cyberstar website though, as it appears to be infected with browser exploit thingy)
According to Belkin their full range of merchandise is also available at "Odyssey chain of leisure stores" in India.
Should cost you about 1200 INR.
The picture show the US version but Santosh Mishra of freshnews.in, an Indian news webite, reports that this model is available for the Indian market.
Solution 2:
It depends. Real surge protection has multiple levels. High quality house wiring should already contain high-level surge protection, and a good power adapter offers some low-level protection. With an unreliable power grid as in many places in India, your main problem are probably brown-outs, i.e. the opposite of a power surge. A laptop's power adpter and battery will filter out those just fine.
But there's nothing (certainly nothing portable) that can protect your laptop against the kind of power surge you get when lightning hits a power line nearby and the house wiring doesn't have high-level surge protection.
Solution 3:
Your friends are right. :)
APC - list of products for surge protection
http://www.apc.com/products/category.cfm?id=12
voltage and frequency
220-240V/50Hz
India plugs
- http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/electricity.htm#plugs_c
- http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/electricity.htm#plugs_d
- http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/electricity.htm#plugs_m