Tech Brand Talk - Page 2

It happens quite often. You switch the TV on and, after a few minutes of watching, something draws you to another room of the house for what you expect to be a quick moment.

And it turns out to be a long time.

The TV is still there, showing its content to an empty room. Wouldn’t it be great if it turned off when no one was there?

Well there is at least one product on the market that does this for you.

First there were smart phones, then smart meters, and now here come smart appliances and smart electronics.  Does this mean that smart appliances and electronics will be better?  Not necessarily.

One of the challenges with any form of energy conservation is finding a way to know what is being consumed as it’s being consumed. It’s not unlike watching the odometer in your car and matching it to the fuel gauge to understand when you need to refill.

With electricity, gas, and water at your home, this information is only as frequent as your bill, unless you hang out next to your meter and watch it change. This is all about to change with the introduction of smart meter with home area network capability.

I see it quite frequently - people using very powerful computers to do very simple tasks, such as email or web surfing. It’s like using a sledgehammer to tap in a nail to hold up a picture.

 It might now be time to scratch your head and figure out what you really need for computing horsepower.

Where does all my energy go?

 No we aren’t talking about not sleeping and just feeling drained. It’s about  looking at your BC Hydro bill and wondering which devices are sucking the kWh’s. 

Maybe it’s time to put on your detective hat and go hunting.  Let’s try to find which appliances and electronics are  really consuming energy.

One of the great things about today’s cable services and online media is how it expands access to music.  Instead of having to pick a bunch of CDs to play as background music, you can fire up the “music channel” on your cable box and have a variety of songs played without any direct involvement in the selection.

This is great, but did you know there is a hidden energy penalty?  Can you spot it?

Give yourself a solid pat on the back if you bought an ENERGY STAR 5.1-qualified TV.  But before you brag to your friends about being eco-savvy, take a step back from the TV and follow that mess of cables down, way down.

Shopping for that new big screen television and overwhelmed by the selection and features available? 

It used to be that walking in to buy a TV was all about picture quality, refresh rate, size, and (hopefully) energy efficiency, but that’s slowly changing. Taking a page from Apple’s playbook, most TV manufacturers are now bulking up their product offerings with things like YouTube playback, app stores, video conferencing, WiFi, and 3D.

It seems that with every back-to-school season the appetite to purchase electronics increases. Students want new computers, printers, scanners and a plethora of other devices to help achieve academic excellence (I’m sure it’s not about Facebook or Twitter).