My family and I have this thing about electricity: we hate to use any more than possible. So when we found out that our local electric company had this thing called a watt-meter to find out how much energy appliances, computers, or anything that plugs in uses. Our electric now thinks we are crazy; once we tried the watt-meter we were hooked. We have borrowed it from them three or four times. It is great.
Enter Kill-A-Watt: A few weeks ago I was browsing a site and found a good deal for a Kill-A-Watt meter. "Great", I thought, "now we can meter things whenever we want." I was able to pick it up for $20 bucks shipped. I don't know why we didn't get one before then as little as it was. At any rate, we have been metering lots of things lately. My laptop uses very little to charge; my desktop monitor, a 19 in. CRT, uses a lot; and our new Bosch 500 series washing machine uses very little for a washing machine.
It is also great for testing electrical outlets: you can see the voltage, the amps, the watts, the Hz, the VA, and, of course, cumulative watt-usage. We put in some new outlets in our dining room and it was very handy to be able to tell if the breaker was off or if the outlet was working by simply plugging this little box into the outlet.
Another very detailed review is here. Here is the product page on the P3 Kill-A-Watt.
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