Get a UPS!

I love cheap uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). For the home user, they make a lot of sense. Replacing the batteries in a UPS often costs more than getting a new one on sale, so I just get a cheap one for each of my computers every year. I look for the $20-$40 deals they have at Fry's on a regular basis. My home has fairly dependable power. The outages I normally encounter are short, usually a second or two. That flash of power can be murder on my hard drives over the course of the year, however. For that reason, I go for the cheap, low capacity UPS devices. They work fine for these short bursts. If I needed the sorts of things which could keep me up and running for several minutes, and automatically shut down my machines, I'd go for something more costly, but a $20 UPS per year can save you a $100 hard drive, so I find it an investment well worth making.