If you’ve ever built your own computer and had to troubleshoot problems on your own, you know how important the right power supply is. Having a solid power supply from a reputable manufacturer can mean the difference between years of stability and random crashes, shutdowns, and in some cases instances where your computer won’t even turn on. Thankfully, Newegg’s Power Supply Calculator is designed to help you understand the power draw of the components you plan to install in your new computer. The calculator can even help you get a feel for whether your current power supply is beefy enough to handle that graphics card upgrade you’ve been pondering.

The calculator itself is simple. There are drop-down menus for the type of CPU you have or want to install in your new computer, the motherboard you’ll use, and the graphics card you’ll install (and a quantity menu for those folks planning systems with multiple graphics cards). The calculator also asks what type of memory you plan to install, the number of DIMMs, the optical drive you’re going to use, and which hard drive will make up the heart of your system. If you’re planning to use more than one optical drive or hard drive, you can select however many you plan to install.

Once you’ve made all of your selections, click Calculate and you’ll see a total of how much wattage your proposed configuration will draw. Using that information, you can decide whether your existing power supply has enough juice to handle what you’re planning or which power supply you should buy for your new rig. For example, if you’re planning to build a new system full of components that will draw about 475W, you may be able to get away with a 450W power supply, but if you’re squeamish at the thought of under-budgeting power, you might move up to a 500W unit.

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There’s a story making the rounds regarding a supposedly ancient Chinese proverb that translates roughly “May you live in interesting times.” While it may be questionable whether such a saying actually represents ancient wisdom, it does give one pause.

Our times are certainly interesting. With all the stories in the news about the financial markets, changes in the cost of living, and the home mortgage crisis, we probably qualify as being in those “interesting times.”

How interesting are your times? Sometimes in spite of our best efforts, we can find ourselves overextended financially. Whether it’s credit cards or other debt, sometimes it piles up and frankly looks like we’re never going to be able to pay it all off. What we need is a plan.

The Debt Reduction Snowball Calculator might be the start of a plan for you. A free spreadsheet download, the Calculator can help you to get a handle on your debt, and to come up with a plan for paying it off. Enter your financial data and see how your payments will help you to retire your debt. In addition, you can generate a payment schedule, so you can see in black and white how you’re going to succeed.

Debt Reduction Snowball Calculator is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. It doesn’t require an installer, and it doesn’t have any macros, so you don’t have to worry about any macro viruses sneaking onto your system. It should be compatible with any system running Excel 2002 or later, or other applications that can open XLS files.

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