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Not all surge protectors are created equal, however. If you really want to protect equipment with a surge protector and not a uninterruptible power supply, find a product called "The Brick", or get one of the ones from TrippLite that tell you protection is enabled, otherwise, you're on borrowed time.

Here's why.

Most surge protectors protect with something called a Metal Oxide Semiconductor, or MOS. This little thing, about the size of your thumbnail (in both size and depth) is all that stands between your equipment and getting fried in a surge.

But - IMPORTANT - how does it work? The eletric overload is shunted by the MOS to ground and in the process the MOS is fried. Basically, the MOS basically sacrifices itself so that your equipment can continue on, as if nothing ever happened.

If the implication of that hasn't hit, I'll say it another way: your surge protector has but one life to give for the protection of its connected equipment. The MOS gets fried with the first significant spike of electricity.

After the MOS is gone, there isn't a circuit to shunt an overload to ground anymore. So where does it go? Yep - your attached equipment has now become the surge protector!

And therein lies the problem. Most surge protectors (and almost all the cheap ones) have no indication that the MOS has given up its life - and, frankly, high transients (spikes) aren't always noticible as you go about your daily business (also, many mild high transients could also fry the MOS, leading to the same state). This means you have no way of knowing, looking at your inexpensive surge protector, whether you are protected or not. Very likely you are not - but you think you are. Then the equipment gets fried, and you curse the surge protector (when it had already done it's one time job and did it well, once before).

Answer? TrippLite has a little LED on many of their surge protectors saying "protected". The circuit board is such that if the MOS is present, you get an indication - if it's not you'll know. The other, expensive, answer is The Brick (it doesn't use MOS technology, but rather a full eletrical shunt) which won't fail. (This is not a plug for The Brick, per se - I use TrippLite.)

Another answer - for lightning protection (doesn't work for electrical transients eminating from generating stations): a full, 1MV-rated shunt outside the house at point of electrical penetration.

Thanks Chair, more good information.

Another call from school today. Oh my, incorrect and stunning comments made during history class while studying WWII and Hitler.

If I was allowed that kid would get his hiney spanked.

Thanks Chair!

Thanks Chair, I’ll be on the look out for both, for all of my stuff, especially for my computer and freezers and fridges.

Wow...thanks for the information!

Who knew refrigerators had computers in them????