Sorry but what are artifacts?

Shrug, Nintendo should do a firmware patch that sets the default to off then. As I stated with Microsoft, damage during intended use should not be occuring, so Nintendo really should be getting it's ass in gear and fixing this.

I heard some hearsay about this about a month ago and got one of those little fans that run off the USB port. The fan keeps it cooler so what can I say? It occurred to me that some crafty entrepreneurs in Hong Kong heard about a unit failing and started circulating those stories... because suddenly they very conveniently had the product to cool down the box when it's in standby. Maybe that's a little too Machiavellian for the guys in Hong Kong but the more the story goes around the more its sure to help their business.

I have yet to hear or read straight from a victim of an overheated/burnt-out board. No doubt someone has had problems with their console and they might have had WC24 turned on but the anecdotal evidence is slim now. If a $7 fan will fix it then I for one am happy. If it starts turning into a XBox360 type problem with bricked consoles then that will suck.

Advice: Turn off Wiiconnect 24 OR hold down the power button, until the light changes from yellow to red (about 5 seconds).

It's basically bright green pixels on the screen, obviously at places they shouldn't be, and is a product of (most likely) damaged GPU not able to execute certain functions.

also keep your wii standing up on its side it runs cooler that way then flat down.

Most likely there are a good percentage of defects still out there.

Well, apparently this is only noticeable for fog effects and certain special function of the GPU. It also need to really close look up on most games except games with fairly dark environments.

care to name some games which this happens on.

ANd are all the artifacts green? or random colours?

are they small? etc..

it be interesting to see if my wii has gotten them anywere

Not that I think you're lying or anything, but I can't see any reason wiiconnect24 would damage the GPU. It isn't even being used when the wii is off.

I'd probably blame this on some other possible defect myself. No matter how good your production line, some units will get through that have problems.

Of course, I guess if you're worried about it, better safe than sorry, but unless Nintendo releases something official, I'll just assume everything works as expected =).