Conserve Valet Charges Your Mobile Devices

If you are like me, you have multiple devices which need to get charged up everyday. Or evening as most of us do when we get home. It seems that the lack of battery life requires us to look at options for getting things charged up every day. And with a smart phone and a tablet, that takes a few cables being plugged into the power strip. Add in an iPod and a laptop, and you are out of space in the power strip. And you now have wires running all over the desk as you are charging and does not look pretty. But, Belkin has a solution for this problem of wires with their Converse Valet. And with its USB connections, it is the solution to wires.

The Belkin Conserve Valet provides you with a device that allows you to hide the USB cable cables under the lid so that they are not all over the desk. With 4 USB connections, 3 of them allow for hiding wires and the 4th is off to the side for your tablet. The lid doubles as a place to put your smart phones and other mobile devices which have the need to be charged daily. And with its simple looks, the Conserve Valet will fit right in just about anywhere that you put it. The measurements come in at 6.25 by 8.5 by 2.25 inches.

The Conserve Valet is stated as having some "green" features to it. If you have nothing plugged into any of the USB ports, it does not draw any electrical power. That is a good thing. So, you plug in all your devices to be charged up and then press the button to start the charge cycle. At that point, a timer starts and the Conserve Valet will shut off the power when it goes over 4 hours. That means that I can plug things in before heading off to bed and not worry about them over-charging because of the timer. That is a great feature.

One of the interesting things is that if you add a device to the Conserve Valet an hour or so later, it will reset the timer and the 4 hour timer starts over. That is probably not what we would really want to see as we all remember warnings about over charging the battery on your smart phone. If you are aware of this, you can make sure to plug everything in before starting the process. But, if you have to remove your smart phone to use it and then add it back when you are done, this could become a real pain after a while. As technology has been improving, it would be great if the Conserve Valet could detect that the battery on a device is full charged and turn off providing power to that single port. And it does for a select list of smart phones, which is dominated by Blackberry.

While this is designed for small mobile devices, so many of us are now carrying tablets. And charging up two tablets at the same time is going to be a problem. Tablets take a lot of power when charging, so adding them may cause a problem for other devices being charged. There are a few reports of selected tablets not being able to be charged on the Conserve Valet.

Until mobile devices get far better battery life, the idea of organizing how you charge them up is going to continue to be something that we all need. The Belkin Conserve is available at Amazon for $35.73 when last checked.

Conserve Insight Helps You Measure Energy Costs

If you are like most of us, you do not know how much electricity you are using on various devices in your home. And it is that unknown which can cause a big surprise when the bill comes charging us for the usage of electricity from the power company. When you get that surprise, it cause one to wonder exactly how much electricity is being consumed by various devices. Such as the power required for the computer I am working on right now. Or the lamp that is left on most of the day. Well, there is a device which can help you figure out which item in your home is consuming how much electricity.

The Belkin Conserve Insight can determine just how much energy is being consumed by anything in your home which plugs into an outlet. This is exactly the tool you can use to figure the electricity consumption. And by understanding which items in your home consume more than they should, you can make adjustments which will lower your energy costs. So, you might be wondering just how good the Conserve Insight might be for helping you to reduce your electricity usage.

The Conserve Insight goes between the wall outlet and the unit that you are measuring. It is at that point, it begins tracking the electricity that flows to the item you are looking at, such as a refrigerator. You can plug in what your kilowatts per hour rate is from your bill and it will tell you the running cost for the refrigerator. It gives you the cost and watts consumed and makes this a great item for your home to try and figure out which things are costing you the most. And the Conserve Insight can also calculate the carbon emissions as well.

The Conserve Insight comes in what looks like 2 pieces, though they are connected together. There is the part that goes between the outlet and the item that you want to measure the power usage. And there is the screen which will display what is going on with the power consumption. The part that plugs into the power outlet is larger than the width of an outlet, so it you are plugging it into a power strip, it will take up more than the one plug.

Once the item you are using consumes more than 0.5 watts, it will start to register how much power is being consumed. Anything less than that and nothing shows up. One of the great things you can do with this is to measure the cost of using a lamp using the convention light bulbs and then measuring the cost using a Compact Fluorescent Bulb (CFL) to determine the difference. Or even measure the cost difference in using some of the new LED light bulbs which are out.

You can pick up the Belkin Conserve Insight from Amazon which is currently priced at $29.99. This is a great idea to determine your energy costs and show your family what it costs to power the home.