If you have a reliability problem that typically takes 1-3 years to manifest (as suggested by the warranty extensions), you won't really know how widespread it is until maybe a year has gone by.
Absolutely. I think it bizarre that lots of people expect perfection, and can't possibly imagine things going wrong due to unforeseen circumstances. It's always either a conspiracy to be cheap, or total incompetence, whereas the truth could just as easily lie in the 'this is new and unexplored territory' and 'no-one really knows much about this area' and similar areas of possibility. Think how many bugs you get in software. The more complicated systems become, the more chance of errors appearing. XB360 is taking the known quantity of a gaming console and pushing it with other less-well understood aspects. There's likely to be problems as the machines being designed by fallible creators!
I'll give a classic example - the Millennium Bridge in London. Upon it's unveiling, to the architects' shock and horror, it started oscillating side-to-side. To Joe Public, it was a situation to scoff at the architects' incompetence to design even a bridge. Yet the truth is the situation of the bridge was one not anticipated by the architects, or ever heard of in the business. It was caused by a combination of the bridge's unique design and the human response to music. The public created a sympathetic oscillation in the footsteps. No-one could be expected to account for that in the design. Music when opening bridges had never been an issue before, so it would never be flagged as a problem subject. It wasn't anyone's fault. It wasn't anyone's incompetence. It was a result of human beings
trying different things and encountering new situations. It was the result of humanity's finite capacities.
That's but one minuscule example in a history of zillions of errors and mistakes. Why expect MS to be perfect, when no-one else pulls it off (exploding lithium batteries, anyone?). For me, the only area of contempt that would be valid isn't in the existence of the problem, but in the fact it's been denied for so long. Yet even that can't necessarily be pegged as a fault of MS's, because we don't know that they
were aware of a problem. That's a tough one to call. They must have known how many units were being returned, and seen it was high. Yet if it was that bad, you'd expect them to do something about it!
As it is, a fault exists, and MS's response, now they've got around to one, is probably as good as anyone could expect. It's going to cost them a lot of money, but they're doing it. You can buy an XB360 and be confident that you'll have it for 3 years, minus one or two periods without when they're replacing it. I suppose that might still be an issue, if they maintain the multiple replacement failure situation. If they actually sort that out, not returning broken items to customers, which we can expect as it's cheaper in the long run, there's not really an issue beyond the ordinary. Things
do break. I've had a wireless router and two WiFi USB adaptors go on me within the year, and long-life fluorescent light-bulb die after only two-years a few weeks ago. My sis was down just yesterday so I could track down a fault with her computers - a duffered 2.5" HDD and an apparent mobo death in the tower. Things break. Always have done, always will do. The question then is how to deal with the breaks. A 3 year warranty, especially in a country known for being really cheap in that respect and effectively adding a 3rd party warranty to the price of goods (something we don't factor into prices when doing US<>Euro conversions, which we probably should do if we're to add cost of peace of mind to the cost of ownership), is as good a response as anyone could expect from a business.
For me, the whole issue can be laid to rest now. For months, the question was whether there was a real problem or not, and how to interpret the evidence. We questioned what might cause a fault and how it could be fixed. That's finished with. There is a problem. It's getting solved as best it can. What more debate is there to be had from RRoD? Seems to me all that's left is luzzing MS hate around and defending their reputation, which isn't constructive.
