You're alienating the blinds. Like cars, 3DS needs to make sound for people that aren't looking at where they are going.

You're missing the point here. I'll give two reasons why the location of the power button was a bad idea:

1. The previous gen system has noncritical buttons at the same spot. How would you feel if say, the R button on the N64 was suddenly the reset button? It's not a matter of eyes, it's sheer habit, considering it's supposed to be the handheld that attempts to lure the hardcore Nintendo fan back.

2. The power button rests in the spot there the front base of your thumb can hit it, especially when they're orienting to keep the screen directly in front. I liked the slider power switch on the DS lite, much harder to trip without effort. And you have to admit, wouldn't the power button be suited to a more "out of the way" place, such as where select/start are?

On top of this, it suffers a software flaw, in which accidental press of a critical button does not prompt that data will be wiped. May I ask why not? It's not exactly a "hard reset" button, since the OS kicks in afterwards. It should be easy to rectify this in firmware.

Part of my job involves professional UI design for software packages, and I have to say that these 3 flaws violate everything in the "sound UI" rules.

* Do not place critical buttons where noncritical buttons once were in previous versions.

* Do not place critical buttons in easy to click places, such as the corners of the screen.

* Do not allow a critical procedure to occur without first prompting for validation (such as a delete).

Personally, I've never made the mistake. It's just another side effect of being awesome. Three DS Phats, Two DS Lites, one DSi, and one 3DS and I don't have a problem finding a button on any of them, nor did I ever accidentally turn the power off.

In all honesty, I thought this was a troll thread but I just tried it and you were right. It does reset if you hit the button for two seconds. I thought it always went into the sleep mode prompt. Go figure. If I did have a gripe, it would be the "non-buttons" (select, home, and start) should be buttons. In past devices I've owned, "buttons" like that always end up getting worn and the real button beneath them always tear through.

I thought this thread was about how the Power button only works half the time. At least with my 3DS I hit the power button and the thing doesn't turn on so I have to hit it again and sometimes its taken up to four times hitting the dang button before the power light comes on. Its really annoying, anyone else have that probelm.

As for accidently hitting the button I did it while playing LOZ:OoT as well I had just reached Princess Zelda at the beginning of the game and I moved the 3DS because my sweet spot was gone and somehow pressed the power button. I tried to get back to the game but had to start from scratch back at the beginning of the game. So freaking annoying!

I have an old CreatiVision home console that had a keyboard made with those plastic membrane buttons. Needless to say, the system still works, but the controllers/keyboard are long dead from wear.

Thank you! I mean...sorry about your loss, but I thought I was the only one for a while. And yes, it's easy to do when pivoting to get that 3D sweet spot.

As for powering on, I think I recall once when I distinctly remember pushing the button, turning away to attend to my laptop and turn back and see it still off. So in essence, when you want it to wor, it wont, and when you didn't want it to work, it did!

I've contacted Nintendo about this. Merely a friendly suggestion that they prompt before shutting the game off, especially since it's an easy button to accidentally press. I urge anyone else whos experienced this to do the same. We could get it fixed before the slew of good games makes it's way to us!

I can imagine that pissed you off but I don't have that problem, press start the save, this problem never crossed my mind to be honest.

I'll admit it was a temporary lapse of judgement at the time. Surely if you played the N64 original, the GameCube version and the Virtual console version (along with the similar controls to Majora's Mask) that you felt even a little tempted to press start when you needed to save?

I was so accustomed to the psp's power "button" that when I was playing my brother's DSlite I turned it off thinking that it would go on to sleep mode. I died a little bit inside :(