This docile Canadian can't help but notice that the US and UK both have flushed their banks down the toilet. I can notice things like that because I'm not worried about my banks. See us docile Canucks somehow managed not to screw the pooch and deregulate banking to the extent that the whole industry collapses. In fact, and this is real funny, our banks are the healthiest in the world.

Now back to enjoying my tea and looking down my nose at my neighbours.

I appreciate that the Wii does't have nearly the processing power of the Xbox 360 or PS3, and the report also seems to respect their differences by comparing the Xbox 360 and PS3 extensively without including the Wii.

Now back to the business: Here we have an lower spec machine that competes and wins over the other two machines in terms of total sales. That's impressive. What's really amazing is while the competitors have increased Power Consumption in tandem with Processor Specs, Nintendo has managed to remain relatively flat on Power Consumption while still increasing Processor Specs (not as much granted) and remaining competitive. Nintendo pretty conclusively earned the power friendly bragging rights this report implies. This large a difference, to me, appears to be by design and I don't mean hardware.

The simpleness of the Wii itself should not be confused with Nintendo's business. Nintendo has demonstrated an understanding of the gaming industry and gamers themselves that far surpasses it's rivals. The Wii is just an expression of that.

That's what happens when you have a low UID, after a couple of bubble bursts you look past the shiny lights and fancy hardware.

In looking at the power consumption figures on Page 10-12 it's amazing the difference between Nintendo and the other Console Makers.

MS Xbox off 3.1 W Idle 117.5 W Active 118.8 W
SonyPS3 off 1.1 W Idle 152.9 W Active 150.1 W
N's Wii off 1.9 W Idle 10.5 W Active 16.4 W

That's just some of the numbers and no typo's Nintendo is an order of magnitude more efficient when running. Amazing. The more and more I learn about the Wii and Nintendo's current business the more impressed I am.

Historically there's been problems with this kind of car pooling service. A number of years ago a company (allo cars? or something) was doing the same type of service. Some of the drivers were using big old crappy vans with no seatbelts. That continued until one of the vans wiped out and the company was shutdown.

The point is it's a great idea to car pool and to coordinate that with others on a website. It's a bad idea for people looking to make a buck to co-opt the website and run unlicensed, uninsured and unsafe private taxi/bus service. That is what was happening here.