William Sommerwerck wrote:
Its been pointed that you don't really need a watt or watt-hour meter to
save money -- you just turn off things you're not using.

This is not altogether true.

No, its true. You just tend to erroneously dismiss things that
you *think* you aren't using -- but really *are*!

My electric bill was ridiculous, so I started checking. I'd been too lazy to
regularly turn off my A/V system's equipment, which includes a number of
vampire devices.

I was surprised to discover that the Parasound controller pulled 30VA, even
when not turned on. And a Lexicon CP-3plus drew 20VA, simply in standby. As
I rarely use it, I turned the standby switch to "off".

Most of the vampire devices are items I don't use regularly. I'm going to
move them to their own strip, so that they will always be off, except when
actually being used.

I've taken to installing power switches in all of the devices
that don't have them. They all *claim* to "sleep" but even
sleeping they often are wasteful.

My current worst offender is the 100Mbps switch. Sure, I can
turn it off -- as long as nothing will have to talk to anything
else! : (this will be problematic when I switch to VoIP phones;
I guess I'll have to install a low power 10Mbps switch/hub just
for those loads)