The other night we had a brief loud thunderstorm.Lightning the whole bit I have 3 dogs plus my daugter went on vacation and I have her two,
We lost power from 5pm to 2am.
When the power came on both my new mac mini and my hp media center were fried. I have surge protectors, the monitor is ok, the printer is ok, the laptop is ok even the wireless hub is ok. But the mouse and keyboard got fried also.
Thing is it wasn't electric, it was the cable box outside on the pole, got hit by lightning I lost my digital phone the digital cable box got fried and my computers either because of Road Runner, which is cable modem, or the cable I had plugged into the media center so I could watch tv and record programs. They had to replace most of the wire and all of the ends from my house to the box and they have to come back and change the box on the pole.

I bought the media center at Best Buy and bought the warranty and it covers power surge so I'm covered for that one.
OF course I have lots of backups 4 usb ext. drives all of them are ok.
But they told me there is no surge protector for the cable box. Best Buy said they have gotten a dozen computers in so far with the same problem, and today was a holiday.