We just had a an electrical storm that did damage to some of my pins. The power went out and came right back on around 6am. Later I found that several of my circuit breakers had been tripped. It's not really practical for me to unplug all of my games when I am not playing and only half of them were on power strips. I had never had trouble before, but this time I found that 2 of my games (not on strips) wouldn't switch on. A little digging and I found that the varistors and main line fuses on those two were literally blown to pieces. Fortunately, $10 at radio shack and 1/2 hr repair and they were back up and running. Would a power strip really have prevented this? I am finding a lot of different opinions.