Thinking in terms of online gaming, I came in here expecting to ban a troll. Now that I see it's serious, I'm of two minds. While they've taken a new direction with easy to use and appealing online applications, they've also largely ignored the traditional online gameplay. In the end I'm left wondering how much of their online is "impressive" because of what it is, and how much of it is impressive because you can sit on your chesterfield and use a pointer to surf the net on your TV.

i have used the internet channel more overall than both excite truck and ssx, that is mainly because after i finished ssx i bought excite truck, and after i finished that i went back to wii sports, but i still find it very usefull as i dont download much from the net, i just browse moost of the time [and the wii is actually not much slower than my laptop]
i use the weather channel quite often too, though not for long, i find it more accurate than tv for the forcasts 4 or 5 days away, though less for tomorrow.
the news channel i have flicked through occasionally and read the odd story, but i am not otherwise interested, i prefer the tv or google news for specifics.

I love my Wii online.

Strikers is great, and our household plays online regularly. Its easily our favourite Wii game to date (bar Sports), and we play it all the time.

I also love the news channel - I would use it twice/week on average, catch up on all the news I have missed. Its much more casual (and relaxed) than using a PC.

Occasionally use the Internet channel, but not often.

oh, and i keep in pretty good touch with the voting channel, can't spend long on it but i haven't missed many questions.

if i wanna game on console, i'll game on console. if i want to do other stuff, i'd do that on the computer.

what the wii does is simplify things for people that aren't comfortable with "complex" stuff.

don't be surprise that there are still a lot of people wouldn't touch a computer with a 10 foot pole. Too many keys, they'd think they'd break it.

i personally never use anything else on the wii other than game. other people have different take on it and might enjoy the simple weather channel. nothing wrong with that.

For the moment, at least, I'm definitely with you. PC Gaming is so far ahead of console gaming in online connectivity that I don't really have much interest in buying a system and taking a step back. I view Wii online as distinct, and Xbox Live and PSN as mediocre PCs.

This will change over time, however. Playstation and especially Xbox are slowly catching up with the PC's online power. When the console becomes a big enough presence to really support a full MMO, I'll start paying attention.  

I sometimes use the Weather Channel, the only con is that it doesnt has pretty girls like the TV ;)

I wanna add 2 cents more to this thread.

1. Weather channel is cool. If you plan on traveling to a major city somewhere in the world in the next week. Otherwise, it's just... 'neat' Use it once in a blue moon for 1 minute.

2. News channel. It's SD. I hate reading letters 2 inches tall, and if it's smaller, you cant read it. Not really enough news, and it's kinda, censored for the kiddies.

3. Youtube Videos. Yeah, this is cool.

Now I want to add what my phone does.

1. Weather - I push about 3 buttons, it shows me a radar map of where I am (whereever that is) the current temp, and a 7 day forcast for the city nearest me.

2. I push 2 buttons, and I'm looking at tons of news.

3. I push about 10 buttons, and I watch those too.

My phone does what a Wii can, but better...

Sanyo M1 > Wii

haha. Overall the online on the Wii for me, is just... something I would have expected to see 10 years ago. (litterally 10 years, not 9 not 11)  If it's for the children, chances are they've been using IE, or Firefox already, and they know their way around the web slightly, and are used to windows/OSX. If it's aimed at adults... chances are, they will continue to read the paper, watch the TV, or for the educated ones, use the internet, or like me, use their phone.

Basically I feel their a waste of space on the Wii.

Whoever said why download videos?

It's nice to push 8 buttons and watch Sony's E3 footage. the PS3 does it. I'm sure the x-box has something similar planned for E3.

It's nice to watch that on your TV, and not your monitor.

I cant wait to play the Killzone Video on my PS3, with my sound system cranked up... buhaha... 

Kwaad: Clearly not online at age 12 despite what his post says.

Wait a second when did this happen?

Just cause their currrent market value is bigger doesn't mean they are a bigger company.... you do know that this specific fact is very prone to swings based on market events, right?

Anyway, it is a great thing for Nintendo to do things on the cheap, but not really a good thing for the consumer. And I predict I will get 'oh but I don't want more' answers but that's to be expected...