If one cares about his equipment, one does not buy Belkin power products.
FYI: Belkin exists solely to pump up the bottom line of big-box stores. IOW, their prices have jewelry-store level markups built in ($2.00 USB cables for $20+, etc.). I would suggest APC, CyberPower, TrippLite or Newpoint (there are some other less common names that are also good) for power products. I like to have at least 1000 joules on my surge supressors - and don't put much faith in those umpty-thousand dollar equipment protection offers, read the fine print and you'll see they set up ridiculous hurdles and leave themselves plenty of wiggle room. Even legit claims seldom get paid.
. The best thing to do is to unplug your equipment when you're not at home and when lightning is in your relatively immediate vicinity when you are at home. This is made easier to do when all your equip is plugged into a power strip or surge supressor. Just turning off the power switch on a power strip/surge box WON'T DO, you must unplug as both the neutral and ground lines are usually left connected by those switches - ample means to get to your equipment. Besides which, the gap between the contacts in the switch when turned off usually isn't very large - close enough to be jumped by lightning And don't forget to unplug any modems/cable modems from the phone line/cable tap as lightning often gets to equipment via that route.
. If you're really paranoid, you can get a standard 3-wire AC socket (the type that goes on an extension cord) and wire the three terminals inside the socket together with a piece of bus wire (bare copper ground wire). Then plug that onto the end of the AC cord from your surge supressor when you pull it from the wall. That will prevent any field generated by a REALLY nearby strike from creating enough potential between the wires in the cord to do any damage.
.bh.
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