Keep the Peace with your Teen Daughter
After realizing the adapters are always draining come power, even if not in use, this seemed to be a good device to help conserve some energy. And after my initial use it turned out to be just OK.
The operation is very simple, you set a timer (which has a few preset options, 3 hours being my default), and hit the small start button. The missing thing is, a second press on the button resets the timer, but does not turn it off, as I would have expected to do.
Thus between replacing the power-strip with an intelligent surge protector with auto off timers, and fancy stuff, and converting the old one cheaply, the latter seemed to be a better option. So far, I’m satisfied with its operation.
But make sure you know what you’re getting. There are no custom timer settings, no off button, and there is only a single (large) socket. If you can do with that you’re given this seems to be a nice device.
The only improvement would be if there was a setting somewhere between 30 minutes and 6 hours. Would be nice if you could set it for whatever time limit you wanted. But, it works like a charm and whatever is plugged into it will turn off after the set amount of time expires. Very nice.
It seems that the things he wants left on use ‘very little’ electricity but if I want to leave something on I’m not being responsible because I’m wasting electricity. NOW we have the answers. As long as he believes them 
This is a very easy product to use. Just plug it in (it is a three plug and must have a grounded socket) and then plug your electrical item in the socket that is part of the unit. You have three options for display: CO2 use for a month or year (that is the CO2 that the electric company will use generating the electricity for this item), monthly or yearly averaged electrical costs (based on a national electricity cost that can be overridden with your own local costs) and the actual wattage being used by the item.
I found it interesting that a cordless phone appears that it is using no electricity until its charge is used and it has to recharge. So far I haven’t found any big surprises but I haven’t tried everything. In regards to trying the TV and some other high use items, it is a little hard sometimes to get to the plug. I guess the big question is this, with so many items staying in standby mode, are we really willing to change our habits and unplug these high frequency items when not in use. I know that many of mine require reprogramming once they’ve lost power so it seems a little unreasonable. But what this will do is make us think about the things that we keep plugged in but don’t use often. Maybe those are things we should unplug when not in use.
The best thing is that now the heated debates are no longer an issue as the evidence of me being right all the time is all that is needed to bring them to a quick demise.