Belkin Ceylon Bag
(Credit: Belkin)Here's something blasphemous: My favorite booth at Macworld was not Apple's, but Belkin's. It knocked my socks off.
Think back a few years: Belkin was a ho-hum manufacturer of unsexy cables and nondescript PC accessories. Then came the iPod, and the company recognized a good thing when it saw one. Belkin jumped on the iPod shooting star and produced a nice line of interesting, well-conceived accessories. But essentially, the company outsourced its aesthetic to the iPod, piggybacking visually as well as functionally on that core device.
Now, Belkin is turning into a design and innovation powerhouse in its own right.
At its attractive booth, the company was showing an amazingly wide array of products, including a hip messenger bag, an HD TV "beamer", a Skype phone, and Podcast Studio. All were interesting, stylish, and well-made. The company has an emerging aesthetic that, while not totally unique, is starting to create a strong Belkin personality.
One item that caught my eye because of its genuine innovation in a totally boring product was its Conserve Surge Protector. It is a thin eight-outlet surge protector (stifled yawn)...with a remote control. Huh?
Belkin Conserve power strip
(Credit: Adam Richardson)Actually it's brilliant: You use the remote to turn off the powerstrip when you don't want it sucking vampire energy. The remote can be used to control one or multiple strips (they have selectable RF channels), so conceivably you could turn off a whole bunch of them in one go in an office or house.
There are two nonswitched outlets so you can turn off your energy-sucking plasma and leave your TV on to record The Colbert Report. Ironically, the power strip itself becomes a source of vampire energy, but it is far less than what is connected to it.
Lastly, the remote looks like a giant on-off switch, about the size of a playing card. It can be attached to a wall-mount, so you don't have to worry about losing it:
Power strip remote on the wall
(Credit: Adam Richardson)Let's hope Belkin can keep up this pace. My hat is off to the company.
(Credit:
GOOD Magazine)
I've been curious recently about how much electricity all our devices that stay plugged in all the time and in some sort of standby mode consume, even when we are not actually using them. And what does that translate into in terms of real money?
Coincidentally, GOOD Magazine has created this handy chart that graphically depicts the impact.
The real surprise on it is plasma TVs--who knew they were sucking so much energy when "off"? And that game console of yours? It's costing you $25 a year just sitting there, even when you're not using it. Have more than one console? Well, do the math...
The chart does not include all the wall-warts for cell phones, laptops, cameras, and the like that tend to stay plugged into the wall (and consuming some amount of electricity) even when not actually charging their devices. By some estimates these are responsible for 4 percent of all U.S. electricity consumption, equivalent to almost 100 million tons of oil. Hmm, no wonder the U.S. is 5 percent of the world's population but consumes 23 percent of its energy...
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