Green Hands USA: America Volunteers

I used to hate giving presentations at business meetings, not because of the presentations themselves, but the stupid projectors. Loud, hot, annoying and wasteful. They took over the room and used way too much energy. Well, Casio has solved all of those problems with their new Green Slim Projector.

This thing is pretty cool for several reasons. First, it uses a hybrid light source, not the high-mercury, short lifespan bulbs of the past. In fact, the lamp will last for 20,000 hours. You would have to replace the bulbs in your old projectors two or three times during that same period. (According to Casio, this would save you $800 over the lifetime of the device, which is almost enough to pay for a brand-new projector!)

Second, the Green Slim is pretty slim on power usage. Power consumption less than 1 watt in standby mode, and that's hard to beat.

Finally, here's the coolest innovation: it comes with a USB port and software to directly run PowerPoints and PDF files. That's right, you can plug a thumb drive directly into the Green Slim Projector and leave your laptop at home. That way, you're not running two devices at once just to do your presentation, and you skip all of that awkward start-up time and fumbling around on your PR to get your presentation on screen.

The three Casio Green Slim Projector models run from about $750 to $999 -- well within the acceptable price range for other projectors on the market.