Wii power

We've had a Wii for more than a year now, and I've loathed that little yellow light that is always on. The Wii stays warm even when it's "off" and we are just about to rearrange our tv, stereo, etc so I ordered us a power strip that allows you to switch off each plug independently.* I want to cut the Wii power off at the source.

While doing some power strip research, I read about the Wii just to check if anyone had problems as a result of turning the power source on and off. Lo and behold, there is a way to turn your Wii to a lower power "off" (I should really call it standby) setting! On standby yellow, the Wii uses about 10 watts of power. If you hold the power button down for several seconds, it first thinks you're going to turn it on ("green") but then if you keep holding it goes to "red." On Red mode it uses about 1 watt. That's a huge difference! I'm kicking myself for not looking this up earlier.

Apparently, the default is to go to standby "yellow" rather than "red" when you have the Connect 24 feature on which allows your Miis to travel to friends' systems, checks the news, and is generally always connected to the internet (hence "connect 24"). You can read more about the different settings here to find the best option for you.

* In my exerience, it is the norm in many other countries for power strips to have independent switches for each outlet. Many countries also have switches on the wall outlets themselves, which is much easier than unplugging things all the time if you don't need them on. I'm not sure why we don't do this here. Anyways, here is another less expensive power strip with several independent outlet switches.