The ecobutton is a little USB gizmo designed to help you click your way into an easier method of powering your PC into a deep sleep mode it can easily awaken from while saving you money and the environment energy. It has a few flaws though, plus it somehow just doesn’t seem worth having hooked up to your computer when you can just as easily do the same thing by reaching over and hitting the power button or flipping your computer into sleep mode.

The ecobutton

Rating:

EarthTechling gives the ecobutton a rating of 2 OUT OF 5 ECO-STARS.

Introduction:

The computer you are staring at right now hogs energy when you aren’t using it. You probably could just hit the off button when you step away, but you consider it a small hassle to your everyday life. We are creatures of convenience, after all, and don’t always like to take extra steps to get things done. That is what the ecobutton is supposedly designed for.

The idea behind the ecobutton, with its “one small click, one big change” slogan, is to help you easily save energy while at the same time appealing to the sloth in us all. The button looking device, which connects to your PC via a USB cable, is designed to let you one click your computer into a special “deeper energy saving mode” than the normal Stand By mode found on your computer.

There are, of course, several questions raised on a device like this. Does it really do what it says? Does it restart my computer without issue? Does it really save energy compared to just leaving my computer running in full power mode or in one of the built-in power saving modes? We’ll look at these issues and some others as we review the ecobutton and its claim of helping you go green with your PC with ease.

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