iPhone activation server temporarily unavailable

Help! I have my iPhone plugged in and when i click the 'Check for Update' button I get a box that pops up that says 'iTunes could not contact the iPhone software update server because you are not connected to the internet'. I am obviously connected. I thought maybe it was my firewall and security so I temporarily dropped them and still got the same messege. Has anyone else had this happen?

I called Apple and was to that it is because the servers are overloaded with the amount of traffic. I was told it should subside in a few days.

I get the same error. I don't even connect to the server so I'm no where near the extraction stage! Tried to connect now over 500 times!! (I'm on a train with nothing else to do!)

If I don't connect soon I fear my Macbook will be smashed in to little pieces!! Come on Apple you can do better than this.

Ok, everyone needs to read this... the problem is solved easily by what everyone else has done... open up your internet connections window, then get to your itunes window open, hit the update button with your iphone attached, ANOTHER window will poppup asking you if you want to update, the second you click update to that second window, that's when you immediately disconnect from your internet using the internet connections window. THIS WILL WORK ON BOTH MAC AND PC for any OS. If you tried this and it doesn't work, you aren't doing it right. Make sure you're doing it for the second window thats asks you to update, not the first one... that seems to be what people are doing by mistake.