There must me some sort of Karma thing going on with me and DVD drives.  First my 360 DVD died and now my Wii crapped out.  It was still reading disks and letting me play, but was getting louder and louder with a "grinding" sort of noise.  For the record, when this happened to my 360, I got it back in about 3 weeks total time including shipping and everything.  On my Wii, I chose the advance exchange option.  They sent me a newly refurbished unit with a reset 1 year warranty (1 year from receipt).  The didn't give me any grief on the phone.  They politely took my information (and credit card, lol) and shipped me a new unit in 3 days.  I just sent the old one back today.

The invoice had a price of $200 on it that would be charged to my card if I didn't return the old one within 21 days.

The only part of the process that was a bit annoying was that I didn't have an SD card so I had to go get one to transfer saves.  Interestingly enough, some of the saves said "cannot copy this save file" -- elebits being one of them.  In the end I just copied the important ones -- zelda and RE4 and let the rest of them go.  I thought I read that there was some sort of process to back up the entire Wii memory onto an SD card at once but I couldn't find it in the menu and didn't bother with the manual.

+1 for Nintendo Warranty, but they should include an option of a discounted SD card or something like that when they are talking to the user on the phone as I bet the majority of Wii owners don't have an SD card lying around. 

wow, that sucks man. I am assuming you have no VC games right?

No, I had no VC games at all. I've been a gamer for a long, long time and though I have wonderful memories of the first Mario on the Snes, Contra, and all through the various generations, I enjoy them as they are -- memories. I like playing new stuff.

SD cards are still too dam expensive, so I am going to wait until I have to get one for a camera or something because I dont feel the need to buy SD card just for the wii.

You think SD cards are expensive? The 1GB one is around $30 here... at max.

Aren't SD cards like $20? That doesn't seem too bad to me, but eh.

Anyway, seems like some Wiis have problems, but for the most part they're ok...and those that mess up get Nintendo's good support.

Nintendo has a very quick repair policy. I've had 2 wiimotes break so far. I send in a repair request and they send a UPS label. Then they send a new wiimote about a week later. No fuss, no muss.

wait... so if you call in and lie to them that your wii broke, and you can basically buy another wii at $200?

Yeah...interesting...

Oh, but it probably doesn't come with any cables, Wiimotes, or Wii Sports. So yeah, that's pretty much $200 worth right there.

That, and when the refurbished (they almost certainly aren't giving you a new one) Wii breaks, they probably won't send you another.