This may be the "Northern California liberal hippie" talking in me, but sometimes I really question whether the energy I use to play videogames is worth the entertainment. I mean, you don't have to have gone to the same high school as Jerry Garcia, in a town run by the Green Party, followed by living in Berkeley (like I have) to realize that your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii eat up a lot of energy while in use. Costs add up, but even more startling, so does our gamer-impact on the environment. Captain Planet is not pleased.
What's scary is that even when our consoles are on standby, they still use electricity. According to green gadget maker TrickleStar, the PS3 will burn off the equivalent of $250 over a year spent in standby, with the 360 doing only slightly better. The Wii, thankfully, uses ten times less than the PS3, which is great for Nintendo, when they are not ranking last on Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics.
Ultimately, one option is to just unplug the console in question when not in use, but as someone who has tried this method, I can vouch that it just doesn't work. I plainly forget each day, and the hassle of reaching around the TV to plug and unplug my 360, for example, is as obnoxious as ELF members on a street corner asking for "only $15 a month to help save our planet".
That's why TrickleStar announced this weird little device, the TV TrickleSaver. Designed with game consoles in mind (but usable for any device with an electrical plug), this stupidly-named adapter acts as an electrical barrier to your game consoles when your TV is turned off. Sure, it's expensive at 35 bucks, and, as Gizmodo points out, it means that all passive actions your console performs (downloads, recharging controllers, etc.) cannot be done without the TV on, but it's one price you can pay if you want to be a greener gamer. Or you can just unplug the damn thing each night.
[via Gizmodo]
Contest:
10:00 AM on 07.09.2009
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As a TL;DR service for anyone who doesn't want to look at the instructions - it seems you plug the television into one of the sockets, and your power strip into the other. There is a dial on the front that you manually adjust for it to sense when the tv is "on" (as opposed to power-save.)
I don't know why gamers get so butthurt over the idea that yes, their hobby does consume a lot of power.
This "consumer-electricity-use" argument is pure bullshit, when 90% of the energy used by us as a population is industrial. It's scare-mongering and guilt-raping of the public.
The other thing with this shit is, will my PS3 still turn on when PlayTV tells it to record TV shows for me? I bet not, fuck you Tricklesaver.
Humans, as a species are parasites, we overpopulate and destroy everything we touch, doomed to eventually destroy ourselves we walk this planet, using natural resources like they're going out of fashion, cutting tracks all over the world to help us travel faster and pupming out toxic substances the whole time.
Face it, we're designed to kill the planet, stop trying to go against our natural progression. The planet is doomed, so are we. Just hope we discover a method of migration to a new "host" planet before this one is totally unhabitable.
Also, sorry TrickleStar, I can't hear you over the hum of my 1000-watt power supply and my AC cranked downed to 70.
Just kidding, it's always a good move to curb our use of resources through simple choices. The idle mode of all the media devices in the home theater is a good start, but I think the real savings are in the computer room, that is if you don't use your machines as servers or want to use remote desktop.
Still not up for buying that though
Ladies & Gentlemen, Sexual Chocolate.... SEXUAL CHOCOLATE!!!! I agree with most of what your saying, even if its a half-empty viewpoint. Earth has existed a long time without us. A few pesky humans on the surface level is nothing next to seismic pole shifts, cosmic bombardment & general existence in the vacuum of space. We have no hope whatsoever of killing Earth, we would kill ourselves long before that could ever happen.
As stated, industry eats the POWAR, & supporting the industry supports that. With that done, consumer level power consumption becomes a non issue - Look at Vegas ffs. I could power every console simultaneously until the end of time on one day of VEGAS POWOR.
Besides hippies are fucking retarded and so is this device.
Really though, I go out of my way to damage this shitpot planet, leaving lights on, Revving my particularly un-economic BMW's engine, shit, I leave my PS3 on just because I can't be arsed to turn it off and back on later! I've turned the powersave function off on my Laptop because it pisses me off to pick it up and it not be on.. (fucking Windows taking half a year to boot up bullshit - another brilliant product from Microshaft! - bwahaha, had to do it, Rofl much.)
I do this in the vein hope that a Hippy will see me and cry, or even better a Native American (in midlands UK) willcatch me and cry so I can take a picture all like that iconic poster or whatever, you know, the end of Waynes World 2.
Fuck the planet, I'm here for a good time not a long time, I'll leave this shit for my kids (1st of which will be here 1st jan 2010) and if they give a shit, they can do something about it.
Bah eco-humbug.
...anyway, I would love to shut all my shit down via my surge protector, but as I've painstakingly calibrated my tv, I refuse to lose my settings as I'm OCD about them. But, if you don't care and use factory presets anyway, why wouldn't you want to save all of that money?
And how is a little plug gonna stop idle power drawing? I thought the only way to stop that was to actually unplug whatever? I wouldn't be surprised if this did nothing at all and was just a timer/limiter and nothing else.
It won't be long before we're running on solar power anyway.
Does that work? Thats the extent of what I do.
I ordered this one last year and it has worked great.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006PUDQK/ref=ox_ya_oh_product
I thought it was a little pricey but with the amount of electronics I have plugged in it's made at least a little dent in my bill.
Boy it's a good thing my mom pays my electricity bill
Appealing to lowering one's electrical bill is the way to go, not this "we need to save energy to keep the earth from spinning off its axis and into the sun" bullshit.
Does the effort it save warrant the greater price and presumably greater electrical draw than just a power bar I can turn on and off?
The real key is to have manufacturers stop making electronic that constantly suck electricity, even when they are off. Now, I'll buy that for a dollar and would save us all quite a few more than that.
Everything else is off OFF!
Also, incense people by the store make me gag it's so strong. But it's a good place to live if you want trans-fat free doughnuts, a frozen yogurt place for every five people, and Buddhists chanting up and down Telegraph.
Exactly! You don't need this piece of crap which looks awkward and probably operates just as awkwardly. If you're not using your electronic devices, then just flip the damn switch on the surge protector and you won't have to worry about them sucking up energy just for the sake of it.
I swear to God, all of this eco nonsense is making people into retards.
"Well you see Jimmy, for about 50 years it was really important that people be able to spray things out of cans. And that's why you can never go outside."
"Burn in hell, grandpa!"
"Oh, you're welcome Jimmy."
gee, if only someone would do something. Oh wait, you mean the company supplying that statistic helpfully offers an expensive power strip? I'll take 5 and still come out ahead. Huzzah!
The first...Plug your game systems into a surge protector, and when you're done playing, flip the switch on the protector to turn them off...Kind of simple.
The second...I don't care...But I still decided to stick my 1 1/2 cents in...