I will be travelling in France, Italy and England and have an Austin House brand transformer/converter. The instructions say it is not to be used with electronics. What will it be safe to use to charge my Ipad and cell phone?
I doubt you really need a transformer. Most electronics sold today are designed to work with both US and European electricity.
If your equipment says something like, "Input 100-240V" then all you need is an adapter so your plug will fit in a European wall socket.
You'll need a different plug adapter for the UK than the one for Europe. The UK uses square prongs and in Europe they use round pins. You can buy them here before you go or get one at a drug store over there.
Wayne - if you buy a multi port usb charger you can charge everything at the same time. I have a 6 port that I use at home to charge our phones, tablets, etc. I will take it to Europe and just plug it into the socket adapter.
wayne,
You most likely won't need a Converter for the products you mentioned, and using the Converter for electronic products could damage them. As the others have mentioned, check the Input Voltage specifications for each device, and if these say Input 100-240 VAC, then all you'll need is cheap Plug Adaptors for ENGLAND and CONTINENTAL EUROPE. I'd suggest packing along a couple as they're easy to misplace.