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Does your Wii make you happier than your iPod?

A survey suggests that the Wii is the gadget that makes people happier than any other gadget. Why might that be? With the Wii, you are often playing with someone.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

How do you measure your own happiness?

These are, apparently, Howdy gadget cases. Might these make you feel happier about your gadget? CC Yvonne (bijoux and crafts)

Do you gauge the tingly feeling in your fingers? Or perhaps the slightly giddy sensation just above your belly button? Do you wait until you cry before you know you are really happy? Or do you merely wait until you are drunk?

I only ask because something called the Gadget Helpline surveyed 2,500 of its most helpless customers and discovered that the Nintendo Wii is the electronic device they would most like to marry.

OK, so the actual measure was this nebulous concept called "happiness."

Naturally, the Gadget Helpline cobbled this survey together in order to gain a little publicity. And it makes me excruciatingly giddy in the pit of my digestive system to help them with this.

Photos: Gadgets we're thankful for, Part 1

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Now for the more substantive point. Did people say it was their Wii that made them happiest because this is the gadget that gave them the most social pleasure? With the Wii, you are often playing with someone. Any joy experienced, therefore, is often shared. You can talk about your rasping forehand afterward in the pub. Or in the clinic. Or, for that matter, bed.

While the second-place Apple iPod is a fine device, the people who might share it with you are those on the 7:30 train who might not appreciate your fondness for the Stranglers.

In case you were wondering, placing third on the happy-gadget survey was Apple's very singular iPhone 3G, while fourth place went to the still-sociable Microsoft Xbox.

So I would like you to go home this weekend and really think very, very deeply about which gadgets make you the happiest and why.

You see, in the survey, ninth place was enjoyed by the TomTom 930 Satellite Navigation System. How can a navigation system ever make people happy? Unless those people were a post-nuclear holocaust Lewis and Clark.

So, here it is. All members of your target sex have been destroyed. Somehow, all the world's gadgets have survived. Which one would you marry?