I usually live in England, which doesn’t have much in the way of interesting weather. I’m in Oklahoma at the moment and we’re having a lovely storm - thunder, lightning, high winds, rain, the works.
A lot of the people I see online who live here are “oooh, storm coming, must log off now”. Is this necessary? I have a circuit breaker, and am on a dial up connection.
Right now, I am erring on the side of caution. The first flash of lightning I see, I log off. Is this necessary? Will my laptop get fried if I don’t?
I’d appreciate some sound advice … log off or stay online?
The danger is surges of power. I’m usually willing to take the chance with my desktop computer, but that is cheaper to replace than a laptop. How’s your battery? When lightning is in the area, consider removing the connection from the wall outlet.
And don’t use the laptop outside. In the rain. They aren’t waterproof, you know.
Circuit breaker? Do you mean the one in the hall closet that’s connected to the wall outlet, or do you mean an external surge protector, into which you’ve plugged the computer and the telephone line? If the latter, and it’s a good, expensive one, you’re probably okay to say connected. But if not, or if you really want to play it safe, turn off the laptop and disconnect the telephone line. IMHO.
Definitely log off. I also unplug the computer from the phone line.
Many people are hit by lightning through the telephone every year and your computer is essentially a fancy telephone since it is connected to the telephone lines.
Most deaths due to lightning happen inside the home!
"In a study by the Lightning Protection Institute (LPI), it shows that more lightning casualties occur at home. Out of 1000 incidents, most occurred (in descending order):
Your laptop might be Ok if the power line takes a hit (the transformer I’m not so sure about, unplug that), but it’s unlikely to survive if lightning hits the phone line - unless you’re on a phone line surge protector, the box under your hands is directly connected to a really long wire that’s hanging outside up in the air.
I have a laptop here that has a dead built-in modem from when its previous owner didn’t disconnect it from the phone line during a thunderstorm in Chicago. He was lucky, honestly, I’ve seen much worse thing happen to electronics connected to phone lines in lightning prone areas. You should see the modem I stupidly left connected in a cabin in northern Wisconsin over the winter & spring (unattended, it’s a summer place). There are big scorch marks where components died, and the plastic is melted around the phone jack.
Thanks all, very much what I thought and nice to know that I’m not being too cautious. The storm has passed, all is well, and I will be unplugging/logging off/playing safe from now on.
I knew the Dopers could come up with an answer for me. Well done!
I should know these things, but though I was raised in the midwest, that was before the age of computers. Now I’m back for the summer, and I can’t imagine what life would be like if I fried my laptop. Shudder
When I was in college, lightning hit the pole behind the trailer where a friend of mine lived. His stereo (among other things) was fried in the incident, and his insurance paid him for the value of it. Afterwards, we were all sitting around one day, and we thought hey, there wasn’t any visible damage to the stereo, so it probably just popped a component or two in the power supply. We’re engineering students, we tinker with electronics, we can fix this and get a free stereo!
We opened the case and found that a large section of the main board inside was gone. Poof. Gone. Most of the solder that had once been on the boards inside was also now splattered against the inside of the case. Capacitors were completely popped. Quite a few things were so charred we couldn’t tell what they had been originally. We just looked at it with this :eek: look on our faces, quietly closed the case back up and tossed it into the trash.
After that I had a much greater respect for the amount of damage lightning can do to something. And yes, he did have a surge supressor on it. The surge supressor also did not survive the strike.
Last time I was using my laptop during a thunder storm I unpluged it and was using a cellular internet connection so I was totally cordless. I was wondering if there was any risk that way, maybe sort of an EM pulse caused by a nearby strike. I don’t think it wuld hurt me if the cell tower got hit though.
For that matter I would assume someone using a wi-fi connection is also safe, but the hard wired equipment might be fried, but the laptop should be safe.
(All assuming the strike doesn’t hit the laptop itself)
My household is multicomputer, and the rule of thumb is that if the time difference between lightning and thunder is less than a slow 10 count, all power stations are shut off, but not unplugged. I don’t bother with unplugging the cable modem, they’re cheap now, and I think they’d stop a surge just fine.
Then I piss off my wife by using the laptop and the height of the storm… but it’s on battery at the time.
Interesting this topic should come up now. We’ve been having some nasty storms here in London (Ontario). Just a few days ago I was walking through one particular building on campus and in the hall there was a big cardboard box full of computer monitors. Written on the box: “HIT BY LIGHTNING”. :eek:
