No Zytrons In Range

I found a new product announcement via Neatorama that is possibly the dumbest product ever made. Not only mind-bogglingly useless, but mind-bogglingly expensive at the same time. Behold, the Greenhouse Eneplug:

See? It’s an adapter that lets you plug your charge-via-USB devices directly into the wall to charge! Wow amazing! Except…

1. Devices that charge via USB generally already come with their own charger. For instance, my Motorola RAZR phone and my iPod both came with their own version of exactly this. This isn’t a new or innovative product in any way, I probably have 3-4 in my living room right now between all the crazy computer peripherals I buy.
2. It costs $47!

   

   For that price, you could buy three standard powered USB hubs. (On a positive note, it’s available the “begging of May,” whenever that is.)

3. Oh, and those powered USB hubs you could buy? They have more USB ports (4 or 8, compared to 1), a longer cable so you can place it where you want, and they’ll do the exact same thing as this $47 device if you simply don’t plug it into a computer. Oh, and if you do plug it into a computer, it’s also a USB hub. Amazing magic product!

I think the point here is to convince gullible environmentalists that if they didn’t use this thing to charge their USB devices, they’d have to leave their entire computer powered on to do it. Which would be a decent point, if it were true, but I’ve yet to see a device that charges via USB and doesn’t also come with a wall charger of its own. And even if you did care about powering on your computer, and you had a USB device with no wall charger, you could still just buy a dirt-cheap powered USB hub and do the same thing, except better in every way.

I think this very well be the most useless product ever sold. If I haven’t talked you out of it, you can order one at GeekStuff4U.com.