ok, this is gonna sound pretty lame to our American cousins but before this forum i had never heard of these electric exhaust cutouts before. i looked on ebay.co.uk and no finds, and it seems that they are only available in the states.
my questions are:

1: do they make a difference to the cars performance?
2: do they make a big difference to the sound over OEM?
3: should i have saved my money on replacing my stock muffler and bought exhaust cutouts instead?