The perfect hotel room strip

Okay, apologies for the headline - thought I might get some of you looking for the latest Eliot Spitzer news. And I also want to acknowledge that with one more post about surge protectors, I think I run the risk of turning this into a surge protector-themed blog (and how exciting might that be?), but for the second time in three months, Belkin has given me reason to venture into this oh-so-sexy area.

The company's new "Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger" is ummm, well, I guess very accurately named. In addition to three standard AC outlets, the strip has two USB jacks for charging phones, MP3 players, phones that are MP3 players, and anything else that can be charged via USB. The strip comes with a mini-USB cable (convenient for Blackberry users, among others), as well as a $75,000 warranty for damage to connected equipment. [Has anyone ever actually taken advantage of one of those policies?]

This one can kill two birds with one stone for those of us who spend a lot of time on the road. It will let us add a few outlets in hotel rooms where we actually want them, and means we can pack one less charger. For $24.95, seems like a good deal to me, and though nobody has it in stock yet, places like PC Connection are selling it for $19.95, and a bunch of stores I've never heard of are selling it for under $15.