Man that’s cheap. I suppose you do need to buy a special screwdriver, too. Still!
UPDATE: Having read a bit more on the subject, it seems very likely that this is a clone of the WiiKey rather than the original chip. That wouldn’t normally be a problem unless you were really counting on getting a holographic sticker with your order. But the clones don’t come with firmware preinstalled — you have to download it from the WiiKey website, burn it to a disc and run it in your modded Wii, thereby loading the code on the chip. Unfortunately, Nintendo released a firmware update to the Wii a few weeks ago that made the disc format in which the firmware is encoded nonfunctional. This appears to be a temporary problem — folks have already figured out how to remaster Wii discs so that they can boot. But the WiiKey people haven’t yet repackaged their firmware in a format that will work on updated Wiis.
So if you have an official WiiKey chip you already have firmware loaded and are fine. If you buy a clone you’ll end up waiting for WiiKey to release a bootable upgrade disc. It’s not a big deal, really, but I wouldn’t want you to end up marooned. The genuine chip costs about $20 and can be acquired from the vendors listed on the WiiKey website.
Oh man, I have the feeling that this is going to go the route of cracking open the TiVo for me… i.e. that it’s not going to happen. Sometimes sharing gadgets is no fun.
Yeah. I think I can talk Charles into letting me at the Wii. But I’ve got a GBA flash cart in the mail — I should try to contain myself.