Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"I just moved into a new apartment and have been reading about all of the new power strips out there, especially the green ones. I was wondering if you had any suggestions about which "green "power strips are out there with decent joules ratings. And when I say green, I mean power strips that have the remotes or switches to turn off all electricity flowing to certain plugs and with at least 2 plugs that are always on. I was looking specifically at sub $50 because I will need two, but if that is not possible I could be convinced otherwise. Thanks!"
Sorry, I'm a little confused. You're saying you would be a Samsung/Sharp and you hope others would too? Because these brands are of a much higher quality for only a slight increase in price? I'm not saying a bottom-line Maxent can compete with a top-line Sharp, but you'll have to line up some very focused statistics to convince me that Samsung and Sharp are better than the little-known brands like Syntax, across the board. I'm sure you know that some LCD panel manufacturers supply screens for several different brands, and the differentiating factor is often the number and quality of inputs, image processor chips (etc), quality control, and the name on the box. And within a company's lineup are often some real winners and some real dogs.
I understand hoping people would get good tvs--no reason to hope they would get crappy ones. But you hope people buy sets from certain brands sounds similar to, you hope people would "buy American". Sure it costs a little more, but the quality's so much better. Show me how it's better, and I'll swipe my little crudit card. I'd say a blanket statement like this is somewhere between unhelpful and flamebait. And I hope you'd agree. (No, my screen doesn't display sarcasm.)