Thanks for your comments guys, appreciated.

Your comments about standby time are something I've been concerned with for a while now - there's a company in Cambridge (that's the proper Cambridge) who've developed a standby chip which runs on 100ma, which is virtually nothing, but that'll take a while to come through - older stuff can take up to 40watts just on standby (mobile phone chargers are a pain - they use between 1 and 5 watts constantly). Those power strips look very useful, although better if they had a remote (turn them off as you leave the house or go to bed and just leave the recorder on). I wonder if there's a UK version yet?

I also thought about buying a throughput meter, although our government are shoving huge amounts of money at the issue of power use/climate change, why should every concerned individual have to buy a plastic box shipped from China and spend hours monitoring the power use of applicances when there's a huge central body who could easily (and usefully) tell us this stuff....

This was one of the reasons for the article in the first place, everything I've found is so blooming fluffy, just give me the numbers. Of course part of the problem here is that the people who do have the numbers are making too much money out of consulting to give them to the people who could use them....