Consumer Reports writes about the pros and cons of LED Christmas tree lighting. In summary:
• Not surprisingly, LEDs womp all over incandescents for power saving, using ~3-33% less power, saving you up to $10 bucks every 300 hours.
• Not surprisingly, LEDs won the durability test, failing to burn out over 4,000 hours, with standards burning one or two out per strand before half that time.
• LEDs were not brighter, but ran cooler—Did you know 14 people a year are killed as a result of Christmas tree fires?
• Surprisingly, LEDs and incandescents tied for initial price, at about an average of 7 bulbs per buck.
No word on the pros and cons of candles vs LEDs in manorahs. What are your experiences? And know any sources for reliable LED tree lights? [Consumer Reports and christmaslights.com]
Girls and boys, Christmas-is-a-coming and you need gift ideas pronto. Socks, hand knitted jumpers and CDs just don’t cut it, but how about a gift voucher? May we suggest, a gift voucher that entitles the recipient to private jet travel, which costs only $5 million!
Earlier this week, we shared breaking news about Seagate selling 1,800 Trojan-horse-infected Maxtor hard drives at retail. I checked in with the company to learn the details, and see if they busted the perp. The official word: The internal investigation by the contract manufacturer determined that the virus was accidentally transferred by one of its employees and not a malicious act.
But accident, schmaccident: Seagate is taking some severe prevention measures to keep this from happening again, including extra anti-virus software—and metal detectors. The situation was more widespread than we originally knew, and anyone with a Maxtor Basics drive should probably read on.
If you are into building your own computers, you know how expensive it is to keep up with the latest hardware requirements. That having been said, if you are planning on building a quad-core rig sometime in the near future, you can now step up to 1500W of power (1600W peak) thanks to the latest model in the ThermalTake Toughpower series. No pricing details have been made available, but it is safe to assume that this one will set you back a few bucks — and that’s not even considering the smoking crater left in your wallet after the monthly power bill arrives. [ThermalTake via Ubergizmo]
