It's a new year, and many people have just purchased a new computer or received one as a gift. Most people spend somewhere from $600 to $1400 on their new laptop or desktop, and whether it's an inexpensive Dell Inspiron or a brand new Apple MacBook, it's a good idea to protect that investment.
The most basic way to protect yourself is with a surge protector. If you have a bunch of electronics plugged into a power strip, it's a good idea to double check whether or not it is also a surge protector. They aren't always. If you're able to find a rating on the strip or the packaging it came in that mentions Joules, then it's probably a surge protector as well. This will be the amount of voltage it's able to protect your equipment from. Many are rated anywhere from 700 to 1500 Joules. Typically, electronics are designed to handle a certain amount of energy fluctuation, but they'll be happier and last longer if they have consistent power. For that reason, you may want to invest in a backup battery.
A backup battery will deliver continuous power to your devices even when the power goes out. The idea is to give you enough time and advanced warning to shut down your desktop computer safely and cleanly, as it can be damaging for a desktop computer to lose its power suddenly. Laptop computers, with their built-in batteries, are of course less susceptible to this, but you'll still want to plug them into a surge protector when they're charging, to protect them from energy spikes.
In the end, though, there's not much that a surge protector can do to protect your electronics from a direct lightning hit to your house. If you're experiencing a particularly bad lightning storm, you may want to shut down all your computers and unplug them from the wall entirely. Maybe do the same for your big expensive TVs, too.
The best and most important thing you can do to protect yourself, though, is to BACK UP YOUR DATA!! I know I harp on this a great deal, but it's really the most important thing to do in all of computing. Expensive, $1300 MacBooks can in fact be replaced, but the photos of your family cannot. I still recommend the cloud backup service Crashplan over all others for its simple pricing and unlimited backup space. For $60/year (one computer) or $150/year (up to 10 computers), it's a small price to pay, especially when a failed hard drive can cost $1200 for professional data recovery services. Make sure you and your friends/family put a backup plan in place so that no data is lost this year. Lets make sure that no data is lost in 2016!