Surge protectors - any point?

[Kiri]

So before you trust your expensive PC to the electrical grid, make sure your surge protector is the real thing!

Your choice of avatar, in my eyes, makes you eminently qualified to speak authoritatively on technical topics!

 

[sadluxation]

Surge protectors are NOT generally transformers, they are surge protectors, usually MOV devices that have a high resistance until some avalance voltage is reached, and then a very low resistance to voltages above that voltage, so that anything large than that value gets shunted across the MOV.

Okay. I take that back.
All my surge protectors are transformers( incorporating other bits too). They are quite old, heavy and strangely robust.
I'm sure technology has come a long way since I got mine, and they seem to do alot more than control spikes from 'dirty' power supplies now-a-days.

Hope that cleared my conscience as well as my pride.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/surge-protector.htm

 

[Underemployed]

Do get one with some sort of guarantee. Even if they turn out to be a load of crap, you can claim the cost of new equipment from the manufacturer and save on your home insurance.

I'm just waiting for the mother of all spikes to hit my 8-Way Belkin SurgeMastertm and I'm sure I can find all the receipts for the £40,000 worth of kit I had....somewhere....

 

[garys_2k]

Some older surge suppressors used saturated core transformers. Reasonable dips or spikes in the incoming line would have very little effect on the output (aside from RF noise coupled past the transformer), because the core wouldn't reflect the changes in magnetic field from the primary.

They ran hot, though, really hot. Not efficient at all.