There are many reasons to try and save electricity. Some try to save electricity in an effort to do their part to improve the environment and some try and save electricity for the more mundane reason of simply saving money on utility bills. What many who own computers and other items don't understand is that some electronic devices draw power even when they are turned off. To prevent this so called phantom power usage a new smart power strip called
CheckTap has debuted.
The power strip connects to your computer via USB and software allows you to adjust the power savings to your needs. The software provides feedback on how much power you are saving and a virtual tree grows based on the carbon dioxide you don't dump into the environment to give you a visual image of how good you are doing. The CheckTap is not clear on what exactly it does be it simply giving you a visual representation of how much power you are using or if it is actually able to turn itself off when you turn off your computer like the
Ecostrip.
Via TreeHugger
By Ian Chiu on July 1st, 2008
