Yeah.  It was kind of fun.. Just be prepared to swap and sd card back and forth several times.

You should have no issue with externally powered USB hard drives.  If you have a bus powered hard drive however, you more than likely going to need a USB y-cable.  What these do is use 2 USB ports to power the device.  I had so many USB cables laying around I just made my own, they are very simple to make.

I don't think you are part of the lucky bunch actually. I'm sure 90-95% of consoles have absolutely no issues whatsoever. It's just the vocal minority who point out flaws (and rightfully so), whereas most people who are content with their purchase won't say anything. It likely sold 500,000 units or so currently and you always expect faults with new hardware launches. 

It's how quickly these faults are fixed (before the end of the year) which will be the deciding factor in the reliability of the system.

true, hurray!

I hope they release a patch for Netflix that makes the gamepad screen go blank during playing. Having it on the whole time (especially during a movie) is just a waste of battery. I kind of still prefer to use a Wiimote to control Netflix like on the Wii. I'm not sure if one can do this anymore but I'll try it out in a little.

Now that I've actually had some time to play with the Wii U, I'm pressed.

I got home a little late last night so The Wife was already home watching her design shows. Usually that means I'll be annoyed because I have to watch them or she'll be annoyed because I make her change the channel. When I saw she was watching those, I happily sat on the couch next to her, picked up my Gamepad, and played the Wii U.

I downloaded Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive, browsed the internet, messed around in Mii Verse, and had a good time without disturbing The Wife.

My only complaint about the Wii U itself is the load times for the menu's and various apps, it can take anywhere between 20-30 seconds which is just insane. I really hope they address that soon.

Still though, it was cool to be playing a game, get stumped, and then go check out Miiverse for the solution, and then hop right back into the game all without leaving the Wii U or even needing my TV.

Sounds good! So can you access all of these features on the gamepad only, without even switching to the TV? If so then that's pretty darn cool.

Yup, there's a button you can press to switch the two displays so I could go from the WiiU menu to the WaraWara plaza.  When I started up Might Switch Force Hyper Drive it started on the TV but I pressed the button that switched screens and it instantly appeared on my gamepad.  Pretty darn cool indeed.

Cool, people seem to be downplaying this feature when it could be the thing which gives it the 'next-gen' feel at the end of the day...when they cut down the loading times of course.

Yeah, the loading times are insane and what is really holding it back.

When I'm sitting on the couch playing with my iPad, I switch between apps pretty often.  When I'm trying to use my WiiU to do similar things, I just can't.  That 20-30 second load just completely destroys the idea of multi-tasking and doing many things at once.

It isn't bad if you're in the middle of a game and want to check out Mii Verse for some help, but otherwise it's pretty bad.