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This is one of Belkin’s ‘Maximum’ series that I assume is aimed at the amount of compensation available should it fail to protect. The two rows of four sockets are spaced so even the larger normal plugs manage to miss contact with each other.

However as I – and no doubt you – have found a lot of oversize plugs and certainly a lot of adapters tend to be huge beyond the earth pin. In my own case I have an eight gang socket (without the spaced shape of this Belkin offering) and as I have two adapters amongst the connections I can only connect six at a time when I have both my adapters present.

Using this Belkin surge strip and some care in what plug goes where increased it to seven as one of my two adapters is just large and not huge. Certainly a plus, but still however the plugs and adapters were arranged one socket was still inaccessible.

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Time to use the ‘extra feature’ the last socket on both sides can rotate up to 180 degrees and by around 90 degrees of adjustment I can now accommodate both my adapters and for now I have a free plug socket as I currently use seven however there are a couple of items I connect occasionally like my Palm charger that could now be left plugged in should I wish to.

When you first switch on you have a green and yellow light beside the on/off switch. The green tells you power is available and the yellow that everything is properly earthed.

As with most better surge strips this can also protect television phone/fax/modem (or router) from the danger of lightning strikes.

The Maximum series protects up to 75,000 amps, up to 2700 Joules and as stated up to £175,000 of connected equipment warranty applies.

Of course the unit itself needs to be plugged into a 13amp plug, most people starting using gang sockets simply because the plugs were in the wrong place so this has a two metre lead on the end. The next thing I anyway found was the convenience of turning everything off using one switch so no more leaving a laser printer on all night. All this was from a four socket strip with no aerial or phone protection and of course no surge or lightning strike protection. I can remember people saying why do you need four sockets. Trying to be fair the PC and monitor probably only took one socket as the monitor was powered from the PC. The only other thing most people used was a printer.

Now I have two PC’s and countless other plugs (I now stick names on them as I will lose what does what otherwise) and while I have seven plugged in there are others lurking nearby waiting to grab that last socket.

At least using the F9M820UK2M I can access all eight sockets. The likely price is around £24 but www.amazom.co.uk have it for a very reasonable £18.19.

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=&Product_Id=135076