One of the things I’ve been giving consideration to while choosing my media server is home automation. I don’t want to go crazy about it and have everything in the house hooked up to a computer so cu……

And the whole point of the Current Cost thing is not to berate people about using electricity (like putting the kettle on) but about wasting electricity (like leaving lights on in rooms that aren’t being used).

And similarly my point about the WiiConnect24 is not that there’s any problem with you *choosing* to have it on 24hrs a day so that you can download and play crap 8-bit computer games on your telly – that’s your choice, as you say – but that if that’s the setting by default (as you say, you have to have enabled it in the first place but by enabling it it defaults to 24hrs instead of only when you switch the Wii on), it’s not your choice about how much electricity you use. I’ve no problem with what the users choose to use; it’s what the manufacturers make the default.

So there, Mr Pope!

On the subject of what you get from WiiConnect24, yes you’re right the News and Weather channels get updates as well as the notification of messages/updates etc. In addition if there are new items in the Wii shop you get messages about that, which personally I like because I sometimes hear about games via the web and forget to go looking for them on my Wii.

Yes, when you start news and/or weather it _does_ indeed go and get an update, however one of the selling points of the Wii is that it is pretty quick to boot up and it’s fast to get into an app. That selling point loses some advantage if you force the thing to have to update whenever you open the news/weather apps.

It’s a “nice” feature to be able to say “what’s the weather like this week?” and spark the wii up, and get to the weather very quickly. If you couldn’t do that, or you had to wait for it to update then you might be more inclined to wake a PC up to get the weather report.

If all you want from your wii is “turn it on and play the game that is in it” then no, you absolutely don’t need the online service to be on all the time. If however you like the richer experience of having data readily available when you turn the thing on, and being in contact with people via the Wii, then it’s quite a neat service.

As an aside, I note that you have two currentcosts in your house, and I suspect they’re both on (the one downstairs was certainly on last weekend when I was over ). I consider the current cost device and the wiiconnect24 being comparable. Both provide up to date information without delay _if_ you leave them on. Both have a cost incurred in choosing to do that. Putting aside the perceived benefits of either device (my daughter would say the wii is more beneficial than the currentcost for example), and the difference in consumption, the fact is it’s one of those choices you make. You choose to have up to date electricity usage information so you can easily berate Tony when he switches on a kettle. Whereas I choose to have my wiiconnect24 always on so that I know when I can download and play crap 8-bit computer games on my telly

One point about the news and weather channels is that I think they might display current news/weather on the home page so that’s why they might need to always use the wifi. Not sure though, never really used/looked at them.

Good work Laura!

There are some neat graphs in this article :

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-2.htm
- showing the usage when you’re playing a game

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-4.htm
– showing the usage in idle and standby modes

The Wii does very well in both, but then it is a much lower spec system, so this is perhaps not a fair comparison.

It’s worth noting that this is a fairly old article now. I don’t know what impact some of the updates (and new channels!) will have had on the power usage.