Florida Lightning Season: How to Protect Your Electronics, Save on Printer Ink, and Set Up Medical ID

If you live in Florida, you already know the drill: sunny mornings give way to explosive afternoon thunderstorms that roll through fast and hit hard. But did you know that Florida is the lightning capital of the United States, with over a million cloud-to-ground lightning strikes every year? In the Orlando area alone, we can see up to 100 thunderstorm days annually. Every one of those storms is a chance for your electronics – TVs, computers, routers, and more – to get quietly fried without you even realizing what happened.

In this episode of Tech Talk with Refresh Computers, David Leavitt and Adam Littlefield break down exactly how storms damage your gear, what actually protects it, and what mistakes people keep making. Plus, they tackle the outrageous cost of printer ink and share a quick phone tip that could genuinely save your life.

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Three Ways a Storm Can Kill Your Electronics

Most people think they’re safe unless lightning hits their house directly. The reality is far more complicated. There are three main ways a storm can damage or destroy the electronics in your home or business.

1. Nearby Lightning Strikes

Lightning doesn’t have to hit your roof to cause damage. A strike down the street can send a powerful surge through power lines, cable lines, and even old phone lines – right into your gear. Anything plugged into the wall or connected to the internet is vulnerable. David has seen lightning blow holes through roofs and melt wiring in equipment rooms right here in Central Florida. Whether the strike is direct or nearby, it can fry TVs, computers, gaming consoles, and more in an instant.

2. Everyday Grid Surges (Death by a Thousand Cuts)

Even without a storm, the electricity flowing through your home is never perfectly stable. Small spikes and dips travel through your wiring constantly. You might notice your lights briefly brighten or dim for a split second – those are symptoms of power surges and dips. Most of the time, these fluctuations are invisible to you, but they’re slowly degrading sensitive electronics like laptops, motherboards, and especially solid-state drives (SSDs). Over time, this constant up-and-down wears your devices out from the inside.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are more vulnerable to power surges and static electricity than traditional hard drives. That means your data is at greater risk than ever during storm season.

3. The Power-Restore Surge

Here’s a danger most people don’t think about: the moment the power comes back on after an outage. That initial spike of voltage when electricity is restored can hit all of your devices at once. You might hear a weird pop near your TV and later discover you’re facing a costly repair. The outage itself isn’t necessarily the problem — it’s the surge that follows when everything kicks back to life.

Florida Heat and Humidity: The Silent Electronics Killer

It’s not just lightning you need to worry about. Florida’s brutal heat and humidity take a serious toll on laptops, phones, and especially their batteries. When the heat index climbs past 100 or even 110 degrees, leaving your laptop in a hot car isn’t just inconvenient – it’s actively degrading your battery every single day.

Batteries have an optimal temperature range. Too hot, and the cells accelerate their chemical reaction, causing them to expand. Over time, this leads to swollen batteries – what Adam affectionately calls “spicy pillows.” A swollen battery can push a phone screen right out of its casing or cause a laptop keyboard to bow upward. In the worst cases, swollen batteries can explode. Remember the Galaxy Note 7 that was banned from flights? That’s how serious this can get.

If you notice your phone screen lifting away from the frame or your laptop keyboard bulging, stop using the device immediately and bring it in for service. Swollen batteries are a genuine safety hazard.

What You Should Be Doing to Protect Your Electronics

The good news is that protecting your devices doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. Here’s what the team at Refresh Computers recommends:

• Use a real surge protector, not a basic power strip. A $10 power strip offers zero surge protection. Look for a device that’s specifically labeled “surge protector.” A heavier power cord is usually a good sign of quality.
• Consider a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). A battery backup keeps your computer running during brief outages and usually includes built-in surge protection. Refresh Computers sells refurbished UPS systems starting around $40 with brand-new batteries.
• Never daisy-chain surge protectors or power strips. Plugging one surge protector into another negates the protection entirely and can actually create more problems. Each surge protector should plug directly into a wall outlet.

A power strip is great for Christmas trees. It’s not great for your laptop. Make sure what you’re using actually says “surge protector” on it.

If a Storm Already Got You: Data Recovery

If your computer took a hit during a storm, don’t panic – and definitely don’t throw it away. A surge-damaged computer very often still has all your photos and files on the drive, and that data may be recoverable. Refresh Computers handles data recovery daily, and for cases they can’t resolve in-store, they partner with a forensic data recovery lab with a near-99% success rate. They can recover data from hard drives, solid-state drives, USB drives, thumb drives, and even tiny micro SD cards from dash cams and security systems.

Why Printer Ink Costs More Than Champagne (and What to Do About It)

Drop for drop, the ink in your printer can cost more than fine champagne, designer perfume, or top-shelf scotch. By weight, some printer ink works out to over $400 per pound. Printer manufacturers practically give away the hardware and then make their real money selling you expensive, proprietary ink cartridges. HP is currently fighting a class-action lawsuit over software that blocks cheaper third-party ink from working in their printers.

And if you don’t print often? Those expensive cartridges dry out, clog the printheads, and sometimes ruin the printer entirely. Here are smarter alternatives:

• Switch to a laser printer. Toner is a dry powder, so it doesn’t dry out or clog. You’ll get thousands more pages per cartridge, and the cost per page is dramatically lower than inkjet.
• Try a tank-style inkjet printer. Models like the Epson EcoTank and Canon MegaTank use refillable ink tanks instead of cartridges. There’s no programmable chip to fight with – you just pour ink from a bottle into a spill-proof tank. The cost savings over time are significant.
• Print in black and white whenever possible. Color ink costs more and isn’t always necessary.
• Print something every two weeks. Set a calendar reminder. Even printing one page keeps the nozzles clear and prevents ink from drying and clogging the printheads.
• Consider skipping the printer entirely. If you only print a few pages every few months, take your documents to FedEx, Walgreens, or a local print shop. It may cost just pennies per page and save you from buying ink you’ll never fully use.

A Tip That Could Save Your Life: Set Up Medical ID on Your Phone

This might be the most important tip in the entire episode. Both iPhones and Android phones have a built-in feature called Medical ID that lets first responders or Good Samaritans view critical health information from your lock screen — without needing to unlock your phone.

Imagine you’re in a car accident and you’re unconscious. If you need a blood transfusion, nobody can wake you up to ask your blood type. But if your Medical ID is set up, a paramedic can access that information in seconds.

Here’s what you can include in your Medical ID:

• Your name, date of birth, height, and weight
• Medical conditions and allergies
• Medications you take
• Blood type
• Emergency contacts
• Organ donor status

How to Set It Up

On iPhone: Open the Health app, tap your profile picture in the corner, tap Medical ID, and fill in the blanks. Make sure you toggle on “Show When Locked” – that’s the part that makes it accessible in an emergency.

On Android: Go to Settings and search for “emergency” or “medical info.” It’s usually found under Safety & Emergency. Fill in your details and enable the lock screen display.

Don’t just set this up for yourself – do it for your whole family. Call your parents, your grandparents, and anyone else who carries a smartphone. This simple setup could be the thing that saves a life.

Need Help? Refresh Computers Has You Covered

Whether you need a quality surge protector, a UPS battery backup, data recovery from a storm-damaged computer, help choosing the right printer, or just some friendly tech advice, Refresh Computers is here for you. Visit the store at 820 East State Road 434 in Longwood (three and a half miles east of I-4), call the free Tech Support Hotline at 407-478-8200 (Monday through Saturday, 9 AM to 7 PM), or head to refreshcomputers.net to explore their services, browse available products, and catch every episode of Tech Talk. Don’t wait for the next storm to find out the hard way – get protected now.