I opened her up only AFTER it died (having previously treated it like a princess). While I did have the returnoption wiht the RROD I knew that the 1 light E74 that came up was not covered by MS extended 'admitted fault' waranty.

So there was no way in hell I was going to pay MS ANY money to fix this problem when it is still as much their fault as the 0102 (3 lights) error is.

I'm absolutely disgusted at how xbox 360 owners have been treated. My box was bought in 2006 so fairly early. It has hitachi drive etc.

I had just over a year of it working with occasional screen corruption (a forewarning of ANA/Scaler or GPU problems to come) but was devastated to read that this INCREASINGLY common fault WASN'T covered under MS's free repair.

Please everyone who's been fucked over by MS sign the 'recall xbox 360' petition (yeah I know they rarely do any good but we need to vent somewhere).

http://www.petitiononline.com/360recal/petition.h…

So I too have wasted £300 + £400 on games and accessories in the year I had the console working (and I never even played it that much).

Never again will I buy an MS piece of hardware because this has been the worst consumer electronics scam that i've ever been involved with and MS knew all along there would be faults both with heat, gpu and the stupid ANA chip they liked to brag about so much (Btw this chip was changed in the HDMI version, not sure if they still get E74s).

And for the record, I know 13 people personally who own 360's and 8 of them have had them die (a few have had repaired ones go on to die again!). This is absolutely disgraceful.

MS conned a lot of gamers this generation and I hope that the 'decent list of games' doesn't blind everyone to how much we've been treated as expendable sheep.

http://www.petitiononline.com/360recal/petition.h…

Im not sure if there is a way of buying these parts but what the hell – its buggered anyway I`ll have a bash at fixing it.

Anyone know if theres a place to buy a scaler chip etc ?

I then turned the chopper 45* and lets just say that it was alive again!

OOOOOOOH did it come down fast and hard. This is my last product i buy from ms because its not worth the gas in my copper!!!!!

With the rush to get them out they were rushing the contact gel on the chip. This in turn is drying out after about 18 month use and causing the chip to burn out.

I would say the Xbox 360 is now ticking time bombs waiting to go off.

Concerning the cost, I come from a PC gaming background, so the cost for another 360 system when mine dies (not if… I expect it to die) is marginal in comparison with replacing a burned out pc gaming system. If my 8800gts dies, I'm out $300 give or take. Not much difference in price between that and a 360, and that's just one component.

Probably I'll buy the Elite and keep the repaired current system as a backup when the red rings of doom show up.

The PS3 is tempting reliability-wise and hardware-wise, but I don't see anything gaming-wise on the PS3 systems that is attractive except possibly running old PS2 games at 720p w/AA. I want to buy it, but I can't justify spending the money. Sony really missed their target market in the USA with the PS3.

On a more serious note, it's a damn shame that Microsoft still hasn't "fixed" it's console indefinitely. Regardless of the games, and the excellent online network, buying a hardware as unreliable as the 360 just isn't a good investment in my opinion.

I know six people with the console, four of them have had it shipped for repairs (one of them has had it repaired twice now if I'm not mistaken).

Another one has to resort to the "towel fix" from time to time to play some games. The final one avoids playing the console too much, specially in hot days because he's afraid it will break down.

The way I see it, the 360 is very similar to any major Windows release. At first it's unstable and very fragile, but after a couple of years of patches and tweaks it finally becomes a decent or great product.

I think that you're making a right decision in waiting out for the new models with the cooler processors, but I'd still rather invest my money in a more stable product.

Last weekend I hooked up my Sega Saturn to play Panzer Dragoon and it's still working perfectly. How many 360 owners will be able to say that twelve years after they bought the console?

I've only ever seen them at two places futureshop in the durham center (harwood and 2) and at wallymart over at brock and the 401 EB games in the area are worse off with the one in whitby telling me last week that they dont even carry the elite and to try pickering.

sucks for sure but hopefully the availability increases or heck take the trip to the USA since our dollar is so mighty right now.

cheers