Woods Surge Protector- They Got Part of It Right
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After all the computer problems I’ve had this week we determined that PART(only part) of the problem was a power bar that had two outlets that were going bad.
So I went looking for one bar that would accept all my plug-in items. This one is doing the job, but there are some things about the design that I don’t like.
First of all this is an off-white box, 5 x 12 inches, with rounded corners and slightly rounded sides (I prefer rectangles with squared corners!). It has a 6-foot power cord of its own with a flat plug that hugs the wall. It does not come with mounting screws! (Although it has a paper template for locating the holes in the wall- go figure.) I would be upset about the lack of screws, but I needed to get hollow wall anchors for it anyway, so a trip to the hardware store was in the cards. It does come with an extra four-foot phone cord, in case you don’t already have a drawer full of them. There is a funky cord “holder” bracket on one end that expands out from the body of the box. They make models that have various TV cable connections, but I did not need that feature, so chose this model instead. There is one “in” phone jack, and three “out” jacks. If you want to use two lines you must make additional arrangements with the phone company. It can absorb 2145 joules of energy in case of a surge.
The outlets are oriented so that the cords aim out to the sides of the box. It has its own on-off switch, a green ground indicator light showing that it is properly grounded, and a red surge protector light that supposedly tells you it is protecting.
For this model, Woods will pay for the cost of repair or replacement of electronic equipment due to a surge or spike while properly connected to this protector for a maximum of $60,000. The coverage for damage due to a direct lightning strike is the same. The documentation tells you how to file a claim in case of damage.
It has little covers that rotate for the outlets that are not in use. A friend said that these are nicer than ones she has seen on similar products because they are not spring loaded. She said that some bars are difficult to plug things into because you have to struggle to rotate the cover against a pressure and try to slip the plug into the holes. These covers can just be manually rotated to either be open or closed.
I wanted to mount this bar in a horizontal alignment rather than vertical. The directions do not say that you shouldn’t do this, but the mounting holes are designed only for a vertical mount. In other words, the center of the hole that you place over the screw in the wall is larger, and then you slide the box into the narrower part of the slot to secure it. But these slots are only in the one orientation. I mounted it horizontally anyway. It should stay where I put it because it won’t get bumped there, but if it were going to be where dog tails or something else might bump it I don’t think it would stay on the wall because gravity is not helping to hold it in the slots. I knocked the whole thing down twice while I was trying to plug all the cords in and string them through the cord manager.
The cord “manager” extension at the end is something of a joke. It has a channel into which you slip the cords coming from the outlets. It has to be wide enough to accept the thick power cords of computers, so lighter weight cords just tend to pop out. I managed to foil this by putting all the lighter cords in first and the heavy cord last to hold them all in place, but it just doesn’t seem very secure. I wish there were some kind of closure like a carabiner clip to hold them.
Well, it works...my cords are much safer and less of a mess than previously, and I can stick my head under the desk and look at the little red and green lights any time I want to.
I don’t know how to rate the effectiveness unless we have some catastrophe where it actually protects things. I gave it a 4 since I’m impressed with the warrantied coverage.
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6953 Made By:
Woods Purchased at: Meijer Price: $19.99 Category: Computers / Computer Security Published: August 01, 2008 00:07
6953 Made By:
Woods Purchased at: Meijer Price: $19.99 Category: Computers / Computer Security Published: August 01, 2008 00:07
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Sharkbytes
Rank: 4th
ShareScore: 100%
Gender: Female
Age: 61
Education Level: post_graduate
City: in Michigan
Country: United States
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More reviews by this Author
Rank: 4th
ShareScore: 100%
Gender: Female
Age: 61
Education Level: post_graduate
City: in Michigan
Country: United States
Industry: web site management, writer
Position: just me- I do it all
Income: $0.00 - $20,000.00
More reviews by this Author
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6)
I havent heard of that amount of coverage,that part is appealing.