I don't think anyone can give you a definitive answer. However, I would look at Nintendogs to see. When the DS is closed and another DS with Nintendogs comes within range, the DS will "bark". This means that the two DS machines are emitting and receiving wireless signals even when nominally "asleep". Someone might have made a comment about battery life for Nintendogs. The big advantage would be to keep the screen off. If you really got clever, you could almost completely shut down the ARM9 and do everything on the ARM7. Well, this depends. 802.11b has quite a bit of handshaking ... However ... The DS hardware is extremely low-level in that you can put 802.11 packets right in the air. You don't have to adhere to the full 802.11 standard ... ie. you can put data directly into beacon packets, you don't need to associate with an AP, you can send before you're supposed to, etc. Given that your other solution is to use a cheap radio, you would be doing the same thing. Take a long look at the ARM7 code in DSWifi to see how you can mangle the packets you want. Depends. How much time do you have and how good are your development tools for the other solution? The lack of a decent emulator for the DS hurts for embedded development. If your other solution can be emulated, it's going to save you quite a lot of time. Good luck, -a