I too had to spend christmas without my Wii due to it being in repair. My youngest kid tried to put 3 DVD:s in the Wii at the same time and broke the disc drive. I took it to repair last friday, then there was the weekend when they're closed, they didn't have time to fix it mon, tue and wed, so it's next monday earliest that i get the console.

@Faxanadu: +10. LOL.

I bought a surge protector two years ago (got one cheap) and it's still unwrapped. Got it for my internet router in case if lightning strikes the phone wires (it doesn't really protect from it, but it does reduce the harmful radius).

It's pretty rare to have a harmful surge from electric grid, in order to have one, you need to live in an old house, end of the long line in rural area and neighbour(s) have something like a wheat dryer in the same line.

 You guys are so smart. Told her to do this and when she tried it again this morning it worked. Christmas is saved...

@Starbruin: Maybe you can't. Anyway, why not use landlines if tree branches and leaves are causing big problems? And the transformers as being a part of the infrastructure, when they blow, they usually have blown to protect the line from a surge (and if a transformer for some reason lets a surge to pass, it's going to be so big, that your surge protector isn't going to help at all).

   My son had also stuffed two DVDs into my Wii, but fortunately the Wii was fine.  There was also another time that the Wii wouldn't accept me trying to insert a disk, so I hit the eject button, and my credit card came out.  The Wii really does print money.

@Hawk: If you tried buying Wii Points that way, you did it wrong.

@bd: Yes, people from underdeveloped countries can be quite funny in their logic.

This happened to my fathers wii after a lightning storm. It just needs to be unplugged cause it got tripped - its actually the wii protecting itself, so its a good thing. After unplugging it and letting it sit, it resets.

@bdbdbd

 I actually haven't had any problems with my equipment. My cheap little surge protectors (the small very basic ones) have been good enough til now. I was only giving examples of times when its possible there could have been a problem, the events did happen but I wonder what woulda happened if I didn't have even just my cheap little surge protectors. And I mentioned getting better surge protectors only because of what happened at my friends place but that was due to faulty wiring that failed about a month after they moved in and the cause of that was the negligent work of a handyman that worked the house when it transferred hands before they came in.

fuses (and circuit breakers, for more advanced countries) are not the same thing as a surge protector.

A fuse/circuit breaker protects from excess current, which could occur if you plug too many devices into a single outlet.

A surge protector protects from excess voltage, which could occur due to faulty wiring, lightning, faulty devices plugged in, etc.

Having a fuse/circuit breaker does not negate the need for a surge protector.

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@Hawk: Credit card, wow. That's pretty good.

This wasn't the first time he did it and usually the kid is interested in our DVD player (old one, not this new that i just bought due to the old one working badly, although, after buying the new, i cleaned the lense from the old, which works perfectly due to cleaning). At first i thought my Wii got locked into "Gamecube mode" since it played GC games and i noticed it after playing GC games, but the guy at the repair told that it's pretty common error when there's been tried to put something "extra" into the drive. The guy also told me that there are some protective bars inside the drive and if the bars are bent, the repair isn't in the warranty (although, it costs only 40€).
Anyway, the wait wouldn't be so bad, but i got Disaster as a birthday present and i bought Wii Music as a christmas present, which both are still unwrapped.