I got a Wii

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Yes it is, but you will need either High Speed or wireless internet, and it takes a while to download the channel.

Nintendo are saying that their internet services are free and easy to use. It obviously expects everyone to have a broadband connection AND Windows xp. I've had to go round to my friends house in order to use my DS online and because I don't have the necessary equipment my Wii is still offline.

So free, yes, easy to use, don't know about that.

Free, yes, easy to use, yes to that also.

You should be able to use most wireless routers, or they've also got an Ethernet adapter available, though unfortunately it's not built in to the system. The friend code system sounds hideous, though I guess they're doing it to protect kids from predators.

Regarding the Wii, I came close to getting one this afternoon, but couldn't quite pull the trigger.

OK, it probably is easy to use but I think Nintendo expects everyone to have wireless internet. My family only see broadband necessary and my PC has none of the requirements for online play. Still, at least you don't have to pay loads for it (I'm referring to XBox Live, I'm not saying it's bad though)

You should be able to get Nintendo's Ethernet adapter, and just hook it directly to your router or a hub.

I guess X-Box Live is a good thing for people who love playing online a lot, but for me it's bad compared to what the other companies are doing. I don't really like online games, but would like the ability to try out online every once in a while. With the 360 that's not a possibility as I can't justify the high yearly price tag for something I'll barely use.

the only thing cool about ps3's online, other than that it's free, is that there's that whole heping cure cancer or whatever it is where you can contribute your processing power on the ps3 towards decoding DNA or whatever numbers it's crunching.

Folding @ Home:
http://folding.stanford.edu/

Everyone should be running it on their computer if it's fairly modern. I've had around 8 CPUs working on it all the time for the past 5 years. It's helping to understand/cure diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's etc.

There have already been a bunch of peer reviewed scientific papers published from Folding @ Home research, and their discoveries aren't owned by some gigantic corporation or anything like that.

The bad thing about the implementation for the Playstation 3 is that it has to be the only thing running. On a computer, you install it and you don't even notice it's running. It just sits in the background, using any spare power, and doesn't affect performance or anything. On the PS3, you can't run it at the same time as games, or apparently even at the same time you're watching a movie or browsing the web.

Technically I can understand why. Games on the PS3 are most likely much "closer to the metal" than on a PC, and expect to have almost total control of the system, and it wouldn't have as big/sophisticated OS running to manage time sharing. Also the SPE's performance would likely take a big hit as most likely Folding uses all of their RAM...not exactly practical to run a game at the same time. But still that would have been cool. At least it would be neat if you could run it while watching a movie.

I can't wait until a version of Folding @ Home gets released that runs on Direct X 10 graphics hardware. That's going to be insanely fast! Microsoft ought to let Stanford do a client for the 360 too.