We just received our Wii Replacement Straps from Nintendo a few days ago. Nintendo has been sending out free replacement straps for any Wii owners who requests them. (link below) The new strap is much thicker and stronger than the originals included with the unit. (click image above to enlarge) Although there are numerous complains of Wii remotes “flying” at TVs, windows, walls, and children, we still were unable to break our strap with a decent amount of force. My feeling is that most of these complains came from people who decided not to wear the strap, but then blamed them faulty after they ended up breaking something.

If you own a Wii we suggest order one for just for extra safety. Nintendo will ship out a maximum of four straps per console (not remote). The straps are 100% free, no shipping tax or charges of any sort.

Links: Order Replacement Straps | Nintendo
Related: January 2007 Wii Games

Despite all the articles of defective Mac Book Pros, we decided to order one. We were disappointed when we saw how many problems the unit had. The first problem encountered was the loud hissing sound, which occurs when the LCD’s brightness was turned up all the way and the CPU wasn’t being put to work. The sounds didn’t seem too bothersome at first, but became extremely irritating after working with it for about 30 minutes. The biggest problem we ran into was with the touchpad. The touchpad on the unit we received was smashed in the top and was pushed off to the right. It wasn’t noticeable at first glance, but after working with it awkwardly for a few minutes we could tell that something was wrong.

With all the reports on its awesome performance, it was hard to believe how slow our 2.0GHz Dual Core Processor with 1GB of ram was running. For some reason it took us over 10 seconds just to launch iTunes with no other programs running. Apple’s new Front Row application was also quite slow and buggy. After pressing the “menu” button on the remote a few times, nothing happened. But after about five minutes it suddenly started to take in all the previous actions we had given it, making it go crazy. The computer also kept saying the DVDs we put in were corrupt until the 3rd time we restarted the machine. Apple has a lot of work to do with this.

With so many issues, I suggest that to anyone who plans to purchase a MacBook to wait until a “rev. b” is released. A new version soon should be expected soon if too many units are running into these problems. Note: Apple may have some big announcements on April 1, 2006, which is their 30th anniversary.

Links: MacBook Pro | TUAW Report
Recent: A Faster MacBook Pro