But initiatives like this are all about empowering people to do things by themselves. The alternative to giving people more information so that they are able to take informed decisions is to force people to do it, and that is surely even more of an imposition. Unless you have an alternative solution? Why are people so blind to reality? We have a big problem to solve and if you guys keep on objecting to any attempt to solve it, then it simply won't get solved. Hurrah for the imbecility of the masses.

Producing more clean power is not as simple as it seems if you haven't actually bothered to look into the issues. And if you haven't looked into the issues then don't spout about them - it doesn't further the argument and you just end up looking like a stupid ignoramus. I'm sure you aren't, I hasten to add - you just look like one on this issue.

Fossil fuels are dirt cheap, and that has lulled us over the decades into believing that we can just go on and on consuming more at very low cost. But this cannot go on forever for a variety of reasons, and we have to face up to this fact. The easiest way of fixing the problem is to reduce our need for energy by consuming it more smartly. What's so evil about that?

The problem is that currently there is NO consumer demand for products like this. Things like smart meters are part of the solution to this - give people more information about how much energy they are using on a realtime basis and they will start to understand that saving it by buying energy efficient appliances is a good thing to do.

You say that you've never had the chance to have a smart meter is just proof of the need to do this at a government level - there are plenty of products out there that do this which you could buy for yourself with a trivial amount of research, but you haven't done so. In the UK the roll-out of smart meters is happening, but very slowly - it has been passed on to the utility companies to do it but they are rather dragging their heels which is not that surprising when you think about it!

Power supplies - well obviously standardisation only works from the point in time that the standard is agreed. Now that it has been ratified we should see future products adopting the standard, and so as time goes on we will end up with one standard for power input. The standard has been well drafted and should produce great results IN TIME. If we didn't have the standard then things would never get better - just look at the situation now!

Personally I think the solution to all of this is to impose escalator tariffs on all utility companies - set consumption steps at which the cost of energy ramps up by a fixed percentage. For example, the first 10kW of energy is at tariff, the next 10kW at tariff plus 10%, and so on. Then utility companies would set the tariff rate to be competitive in the market on this basis, which would mean that the base tariff would undoubtedly go down. Then there would be a very real incentive for consumers to increase their energy efficiency. There would be no need to intrude into people's lives and tell them to insulate their houses, and people would still be free to live in oversize houses if they want to - they'd just have to pay much more for the privilege. It's the only real way forward.

All this pathetic paranoia about "government control" and "Big Brother" and so on simply means that we will all go on doing what we have always done - consume energy etc like it's going out of fashion. You jerks need to recognise that people don't do this energy efficient stuff by themselves unless it really hits their pockets hard.

Furthermore for most people the utility bill is something that arrives once every three months and AFTER the event - it's money that you've already spent and it's too late to do anything about it now. So most people just shrug and pay up and think maybe they should do something about it some time - just not right now. It's like dieting, and we all know how good as a society most people are at doing that!

This is the reality of the situation and you are FOOLING yourselves with this ridiculous belief that "with a bit of encouragement people will do the right thing". The evidence is they DON'T!! So someone needs to help people a little bit more than just saying "Please save energy. Please!". But if everyone objects even to common-sense things like smart meters that help people to save themselves money we will never get any further forward.

At the moment most people are hard-wired to consume more. So it is pathetic to believe that this culture will change without some active encouragement. Get real, people! Put your ideology to one side for a second and look at the real world - there's a problem we all have to address, and we need to use whatever techniques are necessary to get on with it. Some of them may be a bit intrusive, but the problem is big enough that we may have to accept this in order that the problem gets solved.

If you can't see this then you are just being too blinkered by your ideology - get clever and wake up and smell the coffee...

@Dave - 51% is still waaaay better than the 20% you get from a gasoline internal combustion engine (maybe 25% or so from a diesel engine). And the electricity can come from renewable sources.

Release to manufacturing. There's this amazing new thing called Google - give it a go some time when you want to know something...

You're right - there's SUCH a small number of apps available for the iPhone, just because of Apple's insane policy of locking down what apps can be installed. I'd definitely go for a platform which doesn't have any limits instead because there's bound to be vast oodles more apps available for it. And they're bound to be better as well, just because the platform's not tied down. And Apple's claim to do this so that the integrity of the platform isn't diminished is clearly SO fake.

Ideology over common sense every day - it's the only way to go!

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying in your reply - for example do you think I should have stood back and done more research or you?

I do stand by my original comments though - good journalism asks the questions that a knowledgeable person would have asked and answers them within the article.

For example, does this have a touch screen? Answer appears to be no - it's got touch controls on the frame edge - this could have simply been mentioned in the article in a few words. And what is the power consumption for a device that's on all the time? There is no answer in the PR and therefore this is a question that could/should be flagged up as having no answer, which might imply that the device uses more power than would be ideal.

It's somewhat lazy to rely on links to other information rather than addressing these sorts of details in the article, and that is the crux of my point. I don't want this to become a witch hunt, rather for it to be seen as constructive criticism.

All the best in return...

Oh, OK - I didn't get before that Engadget was just an index into stuff elsewhere on the internet. I thought it was a bit more than that. Silly me...

Try telling that to all the vast number of people who have populated their entire houses with those little 50W halogen spotlights. The issue with these is that because they are directional lights it takes a lot of them to light a whole room. So you end up with using upwards of 1KW (sometimes 2KW or more) to light a room when you could do it with say 60W of CFLs in standard lamps or table lamps scattered around the room. That is a grotesque level of waste but people do it all the time. The reason, of course, is ignorance - if you ask most people how much power their lighting uses they just don't have a clue.

I just do not get all these people who delight in wasting energy. Waste is like bling - it's so yesterday. Not to mention unintelligent.