A UPS, or Uninteruptible Power Supply, capable of carrying any imagineable home computer rig through a voltage drop, or "brownout", is all but indispensible ... and most affort much better surge protection than the common surge-protector/power strps most folks use. $50-$100 will get you one that'll more than do the job in most applications. It'll also give you plenty of time to do an orderly shutdown in the event of total power failure. Keep any external modem or broadband connection device hooked up to the backup too, and you'll be pretty well covered. All of my 'puter stuff is connected to power via UPSs, and all my AV gear is connected through voltage regulator/conditioners, which in turn are connected to UPSs. Lightning strikes here are common, as are "brownouts", and outright power failures also happen from time to time; we have an automatic whole-house backup generator, but it takes around 45-60 seconds for it to kick in and switch over. The UPSs easily handle the transfer period (though the main AV rig stresses hell out of its UPS if the system is really crankin' when the power goes down
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Just one thing to keep in mind though, Miss bunny, UPSes are designed to give you a fairly short amount of time to properly save your projects & shut down your 'puter or network. They're not a power backup plan or nuthin'.
