If you are buying a UPS for all of your core equipment, you almost certainly do not need to buy suppressor equipment additionally. All UPS units are suppressors and some even have dedicated outlets for extra equipment that goes beyond the UPS power supply capacity.

If you don’t have a UPS or you have only some equipment connected to it, you want all your equipment plugged into suppressors, including RJ11 phone type plugs, cable and coaxial lines, and Ethernet cables. Any outside line that can carry a charge can fry your expensive stuff in a lightning strike and protection is so cheap it’s truly foolish not to have it.

Protect the family Joules

The most important thing to understand when buying surge suppressors is “how much of a jolt can the thing take” and that is a rating expressed in Joules. As a rule, the higher the rating, the better off you will be. Joules ratings run from a few hundred up to about 3400 or even more.
Since the top rating will cost under $50 for even the best brand, get the best.

As discussed previously, this is not a place to cut corners. Saving 10 bucks on a cheaper switch can cost thousands or more in damaged equipment.

· Buy the highest Joules rating your budget allows
· Buy high-quality name-brand stuff like the examples on the next page

While most power supply and UPS makers make stand-alone surge protection products, so do a lot of other people.

In addition to APC and its competitors, we also like Belkin (available everywhere in the free world) and Power Sentry (available at Tiger and at stores like Costco and Sam’s).

Tripp Lite is among the “gold standard” professional grade manufacturers — nice quality but expect to pay for it.

Surge protection products are made by many lighting and supply companies, and can range in price from literally a few dollars to literally hundreds, as the examples below (which we like all of, for different situations) amply attest.