Thanks to all for the replies . The computer is , thankfully , working fine , and I will look into some sort of surge protector . Here in the mountains of Kumamoto , we get a ton of thunder & lightning storms during the year , and often experience outages and once in a while a surge or spike . Last summer our cable internet modem got fried .
I would go for the UPS. They're not that expensive.
Surge protectors are funny things. They mostly work by shunting power spikes to ground. So now the spike is on your ground wire. Not really a good thing.