I thought fellow D5000 owners, particularly those of you who suffered the recall, should be aware that your camera could fail again at any moment. After a brief web search, it appears I'm not alone in my experience. My camera was part of the first recall in July (but not the unfortunate second, in August). It's worked fine since.....until last Sunday, when the on/off switch stopped operating again (even with a full battery, even trying multiple batteries). I've sent it into Nikon's repair facility, but after several days I am STILL waiting to hear whether they've received it, much less how/when they are going to fix it (it's still under warranty). My dealings with Nikon so far have been less than encouraging- I asked how I could be reassured that the fix would work this time, but was simply told that it would and that the second failure is highly unusual. However, a quick web search yielded proof that this is not so uncommon.
Obviously, I hope none of you experience secondary problems with your cameras, but I wanted everyone to be aware that a number of us have......I'll post Nikon's response if it's anything less than helpful.
So, from what I gather, Nikon identified which batch of D5k's were affected and if you purchase one now, you shouldn't have any problems. It was only a small batch of early models (of which mine was one) in a certain serial number range (which if you google, you can find online). Nikon did fix my camera again and so far so good. If you're set on getting the D5k, I wouldn't let this discourage you at this point. I was truly unhappy with the way Nikon handled the fix (they should have recalled them when they discovered the range of the problem instead of letting them get sold and refurbished), but they did handle it (both times), and I'm happy with the camera.