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21 comments on "Good gifts" for the holidays

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Twilight on December 15, 2005 - 10:05pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I'm very impressed with the compact fluorescent bulbs I've been using.  If you get the 60W equiv 6-pack at Home Depot for under $10, you will find that the color is very similar to an incandescent bulb - this was a big turn off for me for a long time.  $1.67 a bulb, and they last long time too.  I've got about 30 now.  Stay away from the "daylight" ones, they look like a gas station bulb - butt ugly color.  And be careful how you handle them, they contain mercury vapor which is highly toxic to breathe.
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Janet Strange on December 16, 2005 - 4:01am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
An additional benefit: Many lamps require 60W or less bulbs. As I got older, I found that this wasn't enough light to read by comfortably. A 23W compact fluorescent bulb gives as much light as a 120W incandescent. Save energy and less eyestrain too.
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Glenn on December 17, 2005 - 7:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I just picked up two more CFL 6 packs to get everyone on my list. While I was at Home Depot I asked a guy in the electrical department if they had the "Kill-A-Watt" device and he had never heard of it, but he seemed very interested in it. I convinced him to at least ask his supervisor about it. I then did the same at Circut City, PC Richards, Radio Shack, and Duane Reade just for kicks. It was amazing to walk by all these incredibly useful electrical devices - stereo systems, flatscreen TVs, toster ovens, etc - and know that there was nothing in any of those stores to help you conserve electricity, nevermind actually generate electricity, like solar rechargeable batteries. Duane Reade didn't even have CFLs.

As someone who works in marketing, there is nothing that sells in retail like prominent shelf space. We need to get more green products from niche websites to the middle shelves of every hardware, convenience, grocery and drug stores.

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ab3 on December 18, 2005 - 8:58am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
For those who don't know, the Kill-A-Watt is a meter that lets you measure the energy usage of any 120V plug-in load. It's great to see how much your fridge uses in a day, how many kWhs it takes to do a load of laundry, or how the ratio of energy input to energy stored when you charge batteries. The Kill-A-Watt meter costs about $30, and there's another kind called the Watts Up that's a bit more expensive. I have the Pro version, which lets me collect the data in the unit and then download them to my computer. They're also great for finding out how much all the phantom loads (all those devices that use power even when they're "off") are costing you.
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