What Tech Gear Sucks the Most?

Bloodthirsty vampires are as fake as the fangs on Robert Pattinson’s character in The Twilight Saga, but real vampire power hogs lurk in your home and should make you nervous. If your house is typical, you have dozens of electronic gadgets and other gear sucking up energy unnecessarily, resulting in surprisingly high electricity costs.

Vampire power is industry parlance for standby power consumed by electronics– such as DVRs, cable modems, or a subwoofer–while they are switched off or not in use. A typical home has as many as 40 devices constantly drawing such standby power, amounting to 5 to 10 percent of residential electricity use, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. [read]