Electricity usage monitoring devices for your home.

If you are sitting at home and wondering what areas of your monthly expenses you can trim to save a little cash, a good place to start would be your electricity use. For too long, most people have paid too little attention to their power consumption around the house for many reasons, one of them being the lack of awareness of the cost per use for all the devices that run on electricity. To help make that knowledge accessible, several companies have seized on the opportunity with different gadgets offerings. According to a test done by the Wall Street Journal, three products currently in the market, do a decent job at an array of price tag. Here, they are listed from the least to the most expensive:
First is the Power Monitor from Black & Decker retailing at $99.99 and the most cost effective when it comes to achieving your goal to cut your power usage because of its easy to read and right to the point display.
Every time you turn on an appliance or a light switch, you get a reading of your actual electric cost per hour or find out how much electricity is being consumed by any given device in use.
Second is the PowerCost Monitor from Blue Line Innovation Inc selling for $109 and which offers a slighter wider display screen and allow a longer range for the wireless signal that transmit the data from the electric meter.
The last of the three, is The Energy Detective 5000 by Energy Inc, with a price tag of $199. What that money will buy you essentially, is a more detailed and sophisticated display that most of us do not need or even understand. It is also the most difficult to set up, requiring a qualified technician while the two first ones are a breeze to connect.
But if you are not ready yet to add these devices to your to-do list, you may be in luck because several power companies are testing their own smart meters which will allow a two-way communication between you and the companies with cutting costs as the objective. And better yet, Google, yes Google the Internet search company's philantrophic foundation Google.org, is in collaboration with some power companies to create a free service that would allows you to monitor your power use Online, through a widget.

For more, see the WSJ.com

Peek simple e-mail mobile devices, now even more affordable.

Back in October, we have posted an article about Peek, a new simple device that does one think and one thing only: send and receive e-mails without a long term contract; today, there is even better news to report. Due to the intense competition between smart phone manufacturers and wireless service providers, the prices of wireless devices are falling at breakneck speed and the Peek devices are not immune to that phenomenon despite their niche character.

Take for instance the Peek Classic which from $99.95 when it launched in September, now can be had for $19.95. Another Peek device, the Pronto, introduced in March and costing $79.95 back then, n0w sells for $59.95. Beside the prices, the two devices have some significant differences.

The Classic only does e-mails and it receives them five minutes after they are sent while the Pronto, like the name suggests, receives e-mails instantly and can send and receive text messages.

Despite these differences, both cost the same to use, $19.95 a month for unlimited e-mails and texts through T-Mobile network, thanks to the use of data compression technology.

Beside its own GetPeek.com site, the devices are sold at Amazon.com, at Target and now at RadioShack stores.

For more, see WSJ.com