Re: Government wants to abolish 'standby' button

In article <cjb9e35kcoll91jjs7q8e2q7imqoa6o9dk@xxxxxxx>, Nospam wrote:
The overall savings for a TV with moderate standby power requirement won't
pay for a replacement wall socket after you have knackered it pulling the
plug or flicking it on and off 7300 times over 10 years.

Carbon emissions from the manufacture of a replace socket will exceed the
savings, carbon emissions from the electrician driving to your house to
replace it will exceed the savings. 

If all the pulling of plugs and flicking of switches results in just one
electrical fault causing a 100,000 quid house fire you have wasted the
potential annual no-standby savings of over half a million TV sets.

Plugs and sockets are designed to be connected and disconnected. Switches
are designed to make and break electrical current. That's what they're for.
And equipment fitted with on and off switches is designed to survive being
switched on and off.

Anything can go wrong of course, but I don't understand why you think the
potential unreliability of a very simple mechanical device, the principles
of which have been understood and put into practice for more than a century,
should be greater than the potential unreliability of a complex piece of
electronic circuitry which is connected to the mains all the time.

Rod.

.