Not to be a pill, but that article is from 2006, and a lot has changed since then. The company that I work for, Power Integrations, has been (and still is, thankfully!) a leader in the development of Switched Mode Power Supply (SMPS) technology for over 20 years. I can assure you that the chips we’re introducing today are both more efficient in “on” mode, and consume less standby power than they did when that article was written. And they’re in most all of the new products that you buy.
Today, we can build a charger/adapter supply that has <25 mW standby consumption and >82% average efficiency over the full range of load. By the end of the year we expect to be able to do even better than that. We can build a 100W TV supply that has peak efficiency near 90% (no fan required), near-unity power factor, and about 450 mW standby consumption (needed to keep the IR sensor and related components powered up so you can turn it on). It’s not unreasonable to expect to see power supplies with average efficiency >90% and near-zero standby. The whole notion that you should be unplugging things to save energy is a bit outdated.
Efficiency regulations are a lot more stringent today than 10 years ago, too. Anybody seen a plasma TV for sale lately, for example? There’s a reason for that, and it’s not because people didn’t like the quality of the picture. It’s because California (the CEC) banned their sale and they were discontinued as a result.
Regulations continue to be the main driver of efficiency improvements, BTW. The manufacturers don’t care about efficiency, because it’s not a “feature” that moves product, and frankly the consumer doesn’t care either, because they tend to focus on the initial acquisition price, not the long-term cost of ownership. Does anybody think that most consumers would be buying LED bulbs for $3-5/each rather than $0.75 incandescents, if the latter hadn’t been outlawed?
Very high efficiency is possible, and will get here eventually. It takes time, though. For example, the DoE is working on a General Service Lamp (GSL) standard that will include “smart” bulbs, and the proposed limit on standby consumption is 500 mW. That’s actually pretty high and most of the bulbs from major players like Philips, GE, etc, already meet or exceed that; many consume <250 mW when the LEDs aren’t on. But, the standard won’t be published until the end of this year and won’t go into effect until 2020. Such is the nature of making mandatory standards; we can do it today, but the industry doesn’t want to pay the costs to implement, so we wait for future product design cycles. In the meantime, stick to major manufactures and you should be good. The Chinese-made stuff… yeah, not so much.
Standards are coming to the IoT, too. If anybody is interested, the IEA just released a report that looks at the IoT, specifically - Energy’Efficiency of’ the Internet’of’Things.
TL;DR - That’s an old article and should be taken with a grain of salt. 