My TV is great for watching movies and high-definition TV shows, but how much electricity is it taking just to run the thing? The answer is, probably a lot — but not as much as some TVs.

Solar water heaters offer tons of incentive to purchase. The prospect of paying essentially nothing to heat the water in my home is pretty thrilling, even if we weren’t in a recession.

In the last 20 years, we’ve gone from home-phone voicemail, to car phones, to expensive cell phones, to laptops, to cheap cell phones that are basically laptops… and the technological advancement list rolls on and on.