HOLIDAY HINTS
A Non-Traditional Gift For Gamers
By Shaun Hatton - December 2nd, 2008
Gamers are interesting people to buy for. By interesting, I mean “often difficult.” Most gamers I know buy the games they want the week they’re released. Gift cards are nice, but why not surprise the gamer in your life with something that, while not directly game-related, is something your gamer is bound to appreciate?
Belkin’s Conserve line of surge protectors comes to mind as one of these potential gifts. Home entertainment devices use a lot of power, and when they’re off, they still consume standby power. Particularly guilty of this are power adapters, and most game consoles have them.
Conserve surge protectors have a wireless remote-controlled on/off switch that can be used to stop power to devices connected to it. This is particularly handy for those of us who have a nest of wires behind our entertainment units and desks or who can’t otherwise easily turn off their surge protectors. For added convenience, the switch can even be mounted on a wall. The surge protector also has two “always on” jacks for devices that need to have constant power, such as PVRs and VCRs. Pretty cool!
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9 responses so far:Subscribe to the Toronto Thumbs RSS feed to be notified when new articles are published.
Wow!
That’s pretty awesome.
Where can people buy those?
Best Buy has them for $50.
What a great idea! Not only is it practical, but it’ll also save you money on your hydro/electrical bill.
And it’s good for the environment
The environmental bonus is definitely nice. Here’s hoping this kind of product catches on with more people.
Good idea, only I can’t help but think of the annoying sibling/angry spouse/fed up parent using this against someone who hasn’t saved yet.
I’d probably accidentally power-down stuff all the time too, were the switch not hidden in a safe place. Aside from tech gizmos, this thing’s come in handy when powering on and off Christmas lighting.
I saw an invention like this on the BBC program “Dragon’s Den” Season 6. I hope belkin did not just rip off the idea, because the fellow swore up and down that he had patented the idea.
Seriously… You could, you know, unplug it… Buying this for a gamer is saying, I have no idea what I’m doing, the internet told me to do it.
@….
“This is particularly handy for those of us who have a nest of wires behind our entertainment units and desks or who can’t otherwise easily turn off their surge protectors.”
- Quoted from this article