On 15/02/15 18:40, Mike Barnes wrote:

FWIW I don't think I ever use a socket switch to turn something off for
any purpose, never mind maintenance where safety might be involved.

I'd wager that in this house, every switched socket is either switched
on with a plug inserted, or switched off with no plug inserted.

Perhaps that's just me. But I suspect not.

I use the switches a lot - to not leave stuff unnecessarily powered.

I'm not worried about a few 10's of watts - but my view is, he
proliferation of little PSUs these days and appliances - if they are
left powered that's a little more probability of one going bang and
starting a fire.

When I was a kid, we had perhaps 6-7 things receiving power all the time
(excepting table lamps that had their own proper switches):


TV
Video (later)
Microwave
Cooker
Boiler
Washing machine
Tumble drier

In fact the last two items had proper mechanical switches built in so
turning them off was nearly as good as unplugging.


These days:

Chargers - 5
Computers (except laptops) - 3
Network gear - 4
Phone bases - 2
TV - 1
Media player - 1
Cooking appliances with electronics and soft switches - 4

Just turning off those 5 chargers and appliances halves the probability
of bad things happening.

But it's nice to not have to actually unplug stuff and have chargers and
cables lying around.