[ozzymandus]

Lightning destroyed my laptop last week, surge protector and all.

[TigerLikesRooster]

I had some second-hand LCD monitor. It looked fine at first until I found that, every time my little fridge starts, it goes black and comes back. I figure that, when a fridge powers up, it must mess up power supply inside the monitor.

[xp38]

Zot of a different order of magnitude

[Swordmaker]

Lightning destroyed my laptop last week, surge protector and all.

The cheapy surge protectors use Metal Oxide Varistors. They essentially vary their resistance with the voltage. When a surge comes through they short it to ground. Once. The next surge will go right on through. So, you get a lightning strike that blows through the MOV, then the air is an ionized conductive plasma and a secondary strike comes through, something that happens frequently. ZAP! Two surges in a row. First is shunted to ground, second goes right on through the cheap surge protector.

[Fred Hayek]

Metal Oxide Varistor surge protectors are cheap, but do not really provide good protection since the MOV’s degrade over time. There are better surge protectors using avalanch diodes, but they are not cheap. In the event of a major surge or lightning strike, avalanch diodes will self sacrifice but still in most cases save equipment. These are used often for servers and data centers in addition to UPS’s.