I moved out in August, so I'm probably quoting you bills from June and July.  I'm sure that our bills from last December were far lower.

There's a reason most electronic devices have a standby mode. Electronics are made to be consistently run. Every time you turn on a device, a surge of electricity flows through it, wearing out the transistors. Standby mode prevents this, by keeping a low current of electricity flowing through the device perpetually. This is also the reason why PCs have a sleep function.

The only reason people have become accustomed to turning off their electronics after using them is because of Windows OS. Windows has problems with ram allocation, and because of this any computer running Windows will gradually slow down if left on too long (after too many programs have been used on the computer). As such, people have grown accustomed to restarting their computers after a bit of time, to give them a fresh start and speed things up. Macs don't have this problem (as much as I dislike Macs), and I know people that leave them on for months at a time with no slowdowns, crashes, etc.

Needless to say, standby mode was not the cause of your Wii's failure. Standby mode was only helping it to last longer.

Nintendo should send you a replacement unit, if you call them before you send it, it'll be there quick, and you use that one till they send yours back, or something along those lines.

Sorry man, never had a Nintendo system crap out on me before. The Wii is probably the system from Nintendo to break the most, but its error ratio is still under 1 percent, that's some pretty bad luck. :( 

This is true, in most cases, but not the Wiis. The Wii actually allocates power to internet functions, such as your on system mail. This makes the system hot. The Wii does have a mode like your talking about, and its always passively on:

True standbye mode is when the little red light is on(which exists for the reasons you've stated), to extend the products life cycle. The OP is talking about Standbye mode for Connect 24(orange light). This significantly heats the system at all times above room temperature, with no cooling solution. Heat of any sort eventually wears down the connections and boards within electronics(See RRoD). With no fan, Wii Connect 24 standbye connection is like having your system constantly on, and it reduces the overall life of your system, most likely, however, I there are no studies to confirm or deny these assertions.

All systems have used a passive standbye mode for years. You can feel where their power source is plugged into the box and it will be everso slightly warm. The PS2 even had a red light. Wii connect 24 is not standbye mode. It is a semi-awake state that allows the internet to communicate with your Wii hardware, and though it is debatable that it is bad for your system, it certainly isn't good for it, and should only be used when necessary, imo.

u do realize that you prolly didn't just make an apples to apples comparison, right?

u have to factor in month of the year, if u have a gas stove, gas hot water heater, etc...the size of the places and how tall the ceilings are...your local climate, etc etc etc

 I'm perfectly aware there are many factors involved, hence why we have different definitions of conservative. I wasn't saying he was wrong, more to point out the differences between peoples power consumption. After re-reading my post, I can see it might come off a bit harsh, but that wasn't intended.

man that sucks. my wii is always on or someone in my house is always playing it and never had any problems. kinda strange that it just died like that... heres wishing for a march resurrection of your wii!

It's all good.  :)  The energy use isn't even the important issue with regard to WC24 anyway; the bigger issue IMO is the popularity of blaming Wii failures on WC24.  I think Wii failures would be extremely widespread (RROD levels) if an intentional, built-in feature of the system was causing it to overheat and fail.

Apart from 6 hours during a power cut and when I took it to pieces to put it in it's shiney chrome case, my Wii has been on standby at least a year.

Back on topic was the GC game and Wii the same region as I imported nearly all of my GC games from Canada and used a freeloader to play them on my PAL GC, I have never tried them on my Wii as I was told NTSC games could brick it so I just play my GC games on my GC.

Nintendo-systems breaking, that's...new