I've known a few friends whose modems/pc's were knackered by power surges during electric storms, though it hasn't happened to us yet. Just wondering ... do these surges come through the modem cable or the power line, or both? (So I know what to unplug when I go away ...) Tks.

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Either or both.

If lightning strikes a phone line, it'll zap your modem. If it's an external DSL broadband modem, most likely the PC will be safe. If lightning hits the electricity lines, then of course you can get a power surge and that can kill your PC.

Several years ago when I was living in a farmhouse halfway to Pak Kok lightning struck the phone line, and I saw the LED on the modem explode This was a dial up internal modem. Fortunately only the modem card was burnt out.

And more recently a power line strike knocked out my PC, again luckily a cheap fix, just needed to replace the power supply.

After that though I bought a surge protector, about $150. All the power in the "computer room" goes through this. Some models also have a socket to protect phone lines.

These are basically very fast-acting circuit breakers.
The normal circuit breakers will not react fast enough to protect electronics.

The same happened to me almost exactly three years back, Broadband modem in the PC and the router blown out in a lightning storm. Since then I've been using a complete multi-surge protector for all PC-related power/data and tel. Available via the local computer guys and in numerous computer shops in town, ideally the smaller ones as Fortress & co don't seem to carry "small" stuff like printer cartridges and computer supplies any more, too small profit margin.

See my Lamma-zine story about surge protectors:
http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma-zine/Blog/Blog-2007-07.html#Jul22

Below is a photo I took this afternoon on Main Street. The box was just open for a few minutes, great to have a pocket camera with me all the time.

Alan or somebody, are these most likely our telephone lines/Internet connections? If this guy makes one little mistake in that cable salad....

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Yes.

That's why PCCW is going broke, it has to maintain this legacy network, but is losing out to wireless and cable services for profitable phone and Internet services, with lower costs.

I might feel some sympathy if anyone but Richard Li was in charge.

Tks chaps. But how is it that these power surges don't blow up TV's, fridges, landline telephones, etc.?

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Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

They can if the surge is big and fast enough, but in computer hardware the very tiny circuits can overload and burn out in a millisecond.

In fridges and such the power goes into relatively huge motors and mechanical parts that would need a sustained surge to damage them; and the normal circuit breakers will cut them off before that.

I expect that new LCD TVs would be similarly vulnerable, as they're chock full of similar circuitry. Or maybe they have built-in protection.