A new year

Well December came and went, considering some of my bad luck it was all pretty decent however. My second 360 died, I sort of knew when I first got it that it's life was going to be short. The very first time I plugged it in (back in May 06 or so) I got the 3 red lights, but every subsequent restart of the unit would have it fire up as normal and play fine.

After the November launch of Gears of War however the machine started to get worse and worse, sometimes requiring a restart of 3-4 times before the red lights went away...this was from a "cold" system as well. Strange stuff started happening in Gears as well, disc read errors, bizarre graphics glitches like all black screen, unloaded geometry, falling through the floor, etc.

Finally around the second week in December, after my trip to Laughlin Nevada the machine never restarted again, I was stuck perpetually with the 3 red lights. Luckily I had some free time prior to Christmas to head to FutureShop and pick up yet another unit on my extended warranty. This new unit was manufacturered in June, only 2 or so months newer than the last unit so I guess we'll see how it fares. It starts up fine and I haven't noticed any odd behavior so .. so far so good.

Microsoft increased the warranty to 1 year from 90 days. Doesn't really affect me since I bought the extended anyway but I think enough people complained that MS was the only company still offering such a pathetic (90 day) warranty. The warranty was the only reason why I wasn't recommending the system to people, even though I've had 2 units crater on me now I still think the 360 has the best game titles thus far and is a decent investment if you like gaming.