I bought a WiiU for my younger sister as an early Christmas present, and was hoping to have it all set up and going before she got home from her last day at school so we could play it together over the holidays.

After over 5 hours I still can't get it to work properly. I need it to be online so I can download the Wii to WiiU transfer thing because my sister doesn't want to lose her saves. At first it wouldn't even connect to the 'Network Device' and kept telling me my password was incorrect or some bullshit. After way too many hours or effort and frustration and turning my router and the console on and off, I did some googling and found a fix, where I have to enter the IP and DNS shit manually, and then supposedly the firmware update will fix some of the shitty wifi problems. Pretty poor form releasing a console in such shitty condition before that big update but whatever. Well I did all that, entered it all in manually and used the suggested DNS settings and whatnot, and at least now it's connecting to my Network Device, but still won't connect to the internet. My router is working fine and everything single other console and phone and device, including my Wii, is online just fine with no connectivity problems at all.

Is my WiiU busted or what? According to various forums this is apparently a fairly common problem, and the WiiU has apparently been pretty bad at connecting to wifi, but everyone is saying that the firmware update makes it work a little better. But since I can't plug in an ethernet cable or download that update to a USB, there's no way to get the update to fix the shitty internet connectivity before somehow connecting to the internet.

Have you contacted Nintendo Consumer Service? They should be able to help troubleshoot any network connection issues you're having. On the occasions when I've had to call them up, they've been a big help.