It costs just $1.36 to charge an iPad for a year

This article is actually featured on Apple's website, here:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/

What blows me away is how bad this "research" is. The news release at EPRI is here:

http://my.epri.com/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_243352_...

Per their blurb:

"The assessment was conducted to determine the load requirements – the amount of power needed to operate the devices -- of the increasingly popular iPad. According to Apple, 67 million of the devices have been purchased worldwide."

"Baskar Vairmohan, the EPRI researcher who conducted the iPad test, said the group is now studying usage to understand whether the explosion of tablets is adding to power consumption, or reducing it."

Of course, they neglect to even attempt to estimate the increased power load due to all of the infrastructure put into place in order to support these devices. The fact that it only costs $1.36 per year to charge (based on some made-up usage pattern) is probably insignificant when compared to the cost of powering the infrastructure serving these devices behind the scenes. From cell towers to home/office networking hardware, ISP networking infrastructure, content servers, app servers and storage.

What's sad is that these kinds of conclusions are parroted by the media as hard science.

EPRI? Hmmmm. Is this tax dollars at work?

C'mon Apple, you don't need to legitimize this kind of junk.