APC P7GB Power-Saving Essential Surge Protector - 7 Outlet, 120V

Comment:
Overall this bar does its job, comes with a Lifetime warranty, and has some good features. Unfortunately, these features also come with a number of baffling design choices:+LED shows improperly grounded wall socket-Unnecessary LED for each non-switched socket, AND the Master socket, AND another for the Slave group for a total of 7 (fairly bright) LEDs, 5-6 of which are always on when all sockets are used.+Total of 7 sockets, more than the competitors (at least those available through NCIX)-Despite the very large size of this power bar, every socket is located immediately adjacent to its neighbour - you can not use all sockets if any are AC-DC wall-warts.The biggest folly of this device is providing an Auto/Manual switch, which disables the switching function - in effect, changing all sockets to "Always-On" mode. This seems smart/neat at first, until you realize that if you have 4 or more devices that need to stay on, one of them has to be in the Master socket, and then guess what... All the sockets are "Always-On"! (Unless you will turn the Master device off, in which case you're contradicting the situation I'm describing). Normally, there would not be a downside to this, as nothing changes. However, APC has gone one step further and not included a switch which turns off the whole power bar, as seen on every other such device for the last few decades. If your wall socket is accessible, that's fine. If it's not, and you go on vacation, for example, you have to pull out the furniture to get at it, or unplug up to 7 devices from the power bar, which will still be watching for the Master device to power on.The other point I'd like to touch on is the detection sensitivity for the Master socket. This power bar has a simple 2-way switch which changes between "high-power" devices (described as PCs and Laptops), or "low-power" ones (Netbooks). Using an Atom-powered Nettop as Master, I have not encountered any issues yet. But as APC does not disclose the wattage necessary to trigger the switching for either mode, you may run into devices which cannot be used to control the other sockets.A decent product, but may not be suitable for some applications. For a few dollars more, check out this Accell GreenGenius model - it has telephone line protection, two wall-wart spaced sockets, and an analog dial to fine-tune the detection mechanism.