I find my reliance on power strips embarrassing. But now I can feel even more guilty with one of these! Finally, I could see how much power I'm pulling from the wall here at EcoGeek HQ so I can feel really bad about it and, maybe, actually do something about it.

This guy remembers how much power has moved through the strip over the last day, week, month, or year and thanks to an onboard battery, it remembers forever.

It can also monitor the quality of power coming into your office, which can be useful for ubergeeks. But for us average geeks, this could be a fairly useful little tool. Two questions though:

1. How much power does the device, itself, consume?
2. How is this $99 device different from my $20 kill-a-watt mixed with a $10 power strip?

The first zero-watt display monitor from Fujitsu Siemens Computers will get you out the office door that millisecond faster after coming up with a design that uses no power at all in idle mode. The zero-watt, 22-inch monitor has a switch in the power supply unit that is controlled by the computer. When no video signal is transmitted, the switch shuts down the complete circuit of the monitor.

That's savvy, saves customers money, and protects the environment.

There's also a secondary way to save power with the monitor. A sensor continuously monitors the surrounding brightness of the environment and automatically adjusts the display. Less power is required in a dark environment than a bright one.

An earlier prototype last year used a solar panel to detect the video signal, but this version will use a relay switch instead to turn off power when it detects no signal. The new monitors will be available this summer and cost the same as regular monitors.

Via Physorg