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Electronics : Belkin Surgemaster 8 Way 2m Cable Phone & Modem ProtectionRating: - A well advised purchase, but beware issues with high power draw computersGiven that these surge protectors are available at nominal cost and will protect your potentially valuable electronic equipment in the event of a power spike, these items are an obvious purchase for every household. There's not really a lot more to say, except that the build quality of the power strip seems to be high. My only issue I have found is that I sometimes have difficulty persuading my PC to boot when it is powered via the surgemaster. The problem seems to be the initial high power drawer of my NVIDIA 8800 GT graphics card. Therefore I sometimes have problems persuading my PC to boot, but since I don't reboot very often it is not really much of an issue. It was puzzling for a while though, so bear this in mind if your PC has a high-powered graphics card in it. Rating:  - Rubbish for telephone/modem protectionAccording to their customer services department, Belkin used to provide a BT to BT telephone cable with this. But they don't any more. This cable is essential because you can't buy them. All you can buy is BT to RJ11 (the little one - looks like a modem plug). BUT, if you buy an RJ11 to BT adaptor to try and fix the problem, it crosses the connections, so that doesn't work, either. The only way is to either buy a BT to RJ11 crossover cable and one adaptor. Or to buy an RJ11 to RJ11 cable and TWO adaptors. I spent a whole afternoon trying to sort this one out. Half an hour on to Belkin tech support. 20 minutes waiting for their sales dept to deal with my call (they never did). Another ten minutes onto tech support again and then finally I was given an extension number for customer services. Who said they were well aware of this problem (try telling your tech support dept about it then!) and that all I had to do was ring up and ask and they'd send me one (but it is only 1 metre long). All pretty useless, in my opinion. It's cost me a lot of time trying to sort this out, including a trip into town to try to find a cable or adaptor. Thanks Belkin. You should be ashamed of yourselves! Basically, if you want modem/telephone protection, don't buy this product. It doesn't work out of the box. Rating: - Works wellFeels solid Works well Plenty of space Cable tidy Worth it for the price Rating: - Great...but....Does the job well but it's been countless times now I've hit the stupidly placed on / off switch with my foot shutting down anything that's plugged in and losing changes on the computer. A redesign is called for with the switch in a less prominent position. Rating:  - Needs More space for adapters!I had a really hard time deciding how many stars to give this. Overall, I'm happy with quality. Seems solid, good warranty on it, and the insurance offered w/ it is a bonus. I like the little bar that raises up to hold in the plugs' cables, and the cool swivel-plugs are the reason I got it. The downside is just too big of an issue for me to ignore. I am a musician and have lots of adapters. Most of them are big... and it's not just music equipment, I have some normal computer speakers by creative with a huge adapter/plug thing, so I'm sure normal consumers will have this problem. The design of this item makes it so all the adaptors face inwards (so the cables point out) but the bulk of the adaptors are at the top. So this creates space issues. Some adapters are too wide and cover neighbor plugs, or they are long and cover opposite plugs. Either way I had a stressful time trying to swap them all around to try and find a way to minimize plug loss. In the end, even witht he swivel-plugs which I thought would help, I still lost one plug (meaning I had a spare plug, which I needed but couldn't use) This was only due to poor product design. Had they added some space between the plugs, or made it wider or face the plugs the opposite way, this would have helped and I could have utilized all the plugs. In the end I had to get another extension lead and plug some extra adapters into that when I really wanted them all in one place, adn I had to compromise some of my ideas. This doesn't sound hugely inconvneient, but I wanted to plug one set of items to stay turned on, and one set that I could turn off every night, but I couldn't arranged the plugs that way due to this extension lead's poor design. I just think, why couldn't they have tested it using variable plug-scenarios in the design phase... they would have discovered the problem I'm having now. Hence the stress caused, inconvenience, and loss of one plug dropped it 2 stars for me. So my summary is this: If you are using standard 3 pin uk plugs, not huge adapters, this product is wonderful... probably 5 stars, BUT if you are like me and have huge adapters, then skip this and find another soloution. |
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