I would like to buy a win­dow air con­di­tioner. I am look­ing for a unit with high effi­ciency and low acoustic noise. Unfor­tu­nately, you do not empha­size those fig­ures in your adver­tis­ing. The Best Buy near my home stocks only one model in the 5000 BTU range, and it has an effi­ciency far worse than the Energy Star com­pli­ance limit. In fact, its effi­ciency is equal to the min­i­mum level allowed for sale in the United States. That’s pretty lame. Retail­ers should be encour­ag­ing peo­ple to use less energy by push­ing bet­ter products.

For­tu­nately, the US Gov­ern­ment has a web site to help cus­tomers select a more effi­cient unit.

It’s frus­trat­ing how hard it is to get real data from retail­ers. When I want to buy some­thing, I want quan­ti­ta­tive data about its per­for­mance so I can weigh its value rather than just its cost.