Avoid ripoffs v1: HDMI is not expensive

An HDMI cable (for connecting digital video devices, like HDTVs) does not cost $16 per foot.  It costs $1.82 per foot (shipped).

If you buy an HDMI cable in person, you are paying 8 times too much.

This has been a moldybluenerd announcement.

Your laptop and mobile phone lie to you

Those signal meters and battery icons aren't really giving you the straight scoop.  People like electronics that indicate long battery life and good signal quality, so that's what those indicators are designed to display. 

The article notes a couple tricks:

• Battery life meters stay at full longer because it makes people think they're getting long phone life.  
• There's no standard for what "more bars" means for mobile phone reception.  And even if the signal meter is accurate, it doesn't show what matters: signal-to-noise ratio.

I've always felt like my cell phone goes two days at full and then drops like a rock.  Now I know why - thanks, Sprint!

Flat panel TV helps global warming?

If it wasn't enough to find out that LCD televisions are power hungry beasts, now we find out that you're helping contribute to global warming, too.

Manufacturers use a greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride to make the televisions, and as the sets have become more popular, annual production of the gas has risen to about 4,000 tonnes.

As a driver of global warming, nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, yet no one knows how much of it is being released into the atmosphere by the industry.

 I guess my old TV set is just fine...

Energy efficiency revisited

A Wall Street Journal columnist recently took an energy meter around his house to look at what used the most power, concluding that major appliances and lights were the real power sinks. However, this blogger posts a rebuttal based on his own testing, noting that appliances have enjoyed substantially improved energy efficiency in the past 20 years. While he's not denying the energy-sucking role of washers and dryers, he notes that even as these big appliances have become dramatically more energy efficient, household energy usage has increased from an annual "793 kWh in 1990 to 938 kWh in 2006."

The major culprit in driving energy use up? Home electronics, like televisions and computers, as well as the multiplicity of battery charged devices (cell phones, razors, and even toothbrushes!). I wrote on this previously, since many of these devices continue to suck electricity even when turned off!