magic spaghetti wizards. I like it

That sucks. I hope you get it back soon.

Depending on where you live you may have a walk in Nintendo repair stop near you. For instance, in Toronto there are 2 walk in places. One is near Kennedy and the 401 and the other is just north on the 404 in Markham. If you can get your Wii to a walk in Nintendo repair shop (ask Nintendo when you call about it) then you should be able to get your Wii back in a couple hours. I did this with my DS that had the broken hinge. It's a great service!

Actually it's the best service I've ever gotten with a broken item.  So I'd classify it as excellent.

Dont understand why people leave their Wii on standby mode - we've had like a handful of updates in the last year and none of these were exclusive that couldn't be manually updated at any time.

Even if there is a 1% risk of it heating then I dont do it - if nothing else think of the environment people.

Wow I leave my Wii on standby with a game in the slot 24/7 and no overheating. Guess my room is well ventilated.

The Wii uses 10W of power on standby, less than a CFL bulb.  My computer uses something like 200W, I don't think shutting the Wii down is going to make much dent in my power bill or the environment.

It's not just about updates, all your channels regularly grab information while the Wii is in standby mode.  It's also nice to see the blue glow when you have a message from a friend. 

20M people * 10watt is probably quite a bit - not that every Wii owner is online but the point i'm making is it all adds up.  I personally have a works email address and 1 googlemail account so i've never entertained the idea of sending emails from my Wii or 360 but if thats what you use it for then fair enough. 

 One of my mates has a Wii and I was round his house and he said "i've never switched my Wii on for about 3 -4 months, never use it" but there it was on Wiiconnect 24 mode - sorry but I really find that pointless personally and Nintendo should have built a mode in where if it's in that mode and untouched it powers off after x number of days, weeks or so.

The point is, if you leave your Wii on standby for a month, you use 7.2 kWh of electricity. My electricity bill at my last apartment was usually around 1000 kWh per month, and my girlfriend and I are pretty conservative with our energy use. We're talking about the smallest of fractions here, less than 1%. 20M people * 10 watts is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what those 20M people already use.

and if every one of those adopted the same opinion with all TV's (say an average of 2 per household), DVD players, Hi Fi's Consoles, computer monitors etc.

Bought a new Samsung HD Tv and apparantly if you want to switch it off completely you have to unplug it as it only has on and standby - I just think it's wrong personally yet somehow this thread makes it sound like I care a lot more than I really do. The main reason I switch it off is just to make sure it doesn't break.

Yet here I am sat typing on a computer with 3 lights on and the TV playing to itself in the background with my phone on charge even though it was fully charged hours ago and I haven't unplugged it at 7:50 in the morning when most people are sleeping talking about conserving energy so guess you're right.

 Wow, you and I have very different definitions of conservative. My last bill for 3 months was 891kWh. I too live with my girlfriend and I personally don't consider her or myself conservative either.

That said, stand-by power accounts for in between 5-10% of your electricity bill. Sure you can say that x * total people * kWh isn't much, but that starts to add up across devices, espically when you now consider that 5-10% of totally residential energy usage across the country comes from devices in standby.

Not that I'm trying to preach anything, I too leave all my devices in standby.