Remember when you could turn your television off and it didn't draw any electricity?
Or how about making toast in the morning. You popped in the bread, pushed the lever down, the bread toasted, popped up, and the toaster was off.
Or even your microwave?
Now nothing seems to be truly off unless it's unplugged. They have lighted numbers that stay on, or clocks that run continuously, or as in my television the brand name is lit up when the television is turned off.
(Trust me VIZIO, I don't need your name lit up to know what brand you are. You're actually not that impressive of a brand now that I think about it.)
What a waste, and I'm tired of having to unplug, or shut down power strips in an effort to conserve energy. But I'll continue because there is a tangible cost involved. As an experiment I didn't unplug anything, or shut down the power strips to various appliances in March. My electric bill was approximately $12.00 higher, and that's with electric heat, which I'm sure less was used due to February being a colder month than March.
Personally I don't need my microwave to tell me what time it is. I just need the damn thing to heat up whatever slop I've decided to throw down my gullet. I don't need a television to remind me what brand it is, whether on or off, it just needs to provide a viewable screen when I'm actually interested in watching whatever garbage a network is showing.
And my toaster? I'm not blind, so the damn numbers don't need to be lit to see that the toast is under toasted, or burnt. My eyesight and sense of smell are both intact, thank you very much.
I don't even want to get started about the power a shut off, but not powered down computer draws.
This is the type of stuff that keeps me up at night, or at least I blame when I wake up at 4:00 am in the morning. I need to blame something, or someone so today's target is these appliance manufacturers.
But I guess there's always a silver lining, as I'm working a couple of twelve hours days and had I woke up to an alarm I wouldn't have had time to make a blog post. I'm not too sure that balances out the tiredness I'll be experiencing later today though. Damn appliances anyway.
7 comments:
I would like to try that same experiment and see what happens over here. It doesn't seem right that off doesn't mean off. :(
Good luck with those long days!
I started using the power strips and real shut downs last year. It makes a difference and I'm sure new versions of appliances will soon have real shut off but that means we'd have to buy new stuff, which I'm not doing till current stuff dies.
Wow, I'm glad we aren't the only ones that use the power strip to turn the power completely off every night to the TV. Since it has a mind of it's own and will sporatically turn itself on during the night. Yikes, that sounded kind of naughty. :)
I wonder if the appliance manufacturers get a kickback from the power companies for producing their products to draw more electricity when you don't expect them to. I could shut down the teevee at night all the way, but we have a dvr box that records stuff off the cable at night so I can't shut that one off. My toaster, thankfully, is just a toaster and nothing else. And if you unplug the microwave, you have to reset the clock before you can heat anything up. It's just like the dang coffee pot. What a pain in the butt!
This is so true. We are getting raked over the coals every day. I hate utility companies and all the money they keep making when we are sleeping at night!!
I would do this but then Matt would bitch about stuff not working since he isn't bright enough to plug something in. It would be more of a headache for me and I may turn homicidal.
Yep, I DO remember that. My mother always says I was born in the wrong era ... I think she may be right.
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