Yeah well my laptop was bought new and included Windows 8. If there are any driver errors, its not on me. It's on the Windows Updates or something. I'm computer literate. I'm know more than most so I only download official, final drivers. No beta. Most if not all are automaticlly updated.

That's probably the most unlikely situation. You don't settle in court unless you know there is a greater chance of you not winning then there is of you winning. A company will never settle when they can win. If their fail rates were actually under the industry standard, then they would have fought and most likely won the case.

If you were computer literate than you'd know whether or not the BSOD was due to a driver, a registry corruption, or a corrupt file already.  Not only that, but you'd know how to search for your specific BSOD error. 

Secondly, you'd go to the support site for your laptop and verify you have the most recent drivers available from them, or the latest BIOS update.

Yeah, because they're intentionally going to do the same disaster again, or explicitly announce that this type of thing will happen again.

I would keep an eye on those 360s. Have you seen this thread?

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=160844&page=1#

"We believe over the next five years we can break a 100 million unit installed base," Medhi said. "That's something we're shooting for, it's not a financial plan as such, it's just rough numbers if you will. To sell another 25 million, half of those will probably come from replacements, but half will come from new buyers."

So basically, they expect another 12.5m 360s to break. And those are only the ones people will bother to replace, I can't imagine how many in total they expect.

It's bad PR. The longer this drags out, the more likely people are likely to find out about it and have this conception that Sony products break easily.
I guess its just a matter or perception. Either one of us could be right, or it could be a little bit of both.

I have all the latest bios and driver updates. All I really saw was the the error as called Blue Screen or something like that. Since my computer pretty much works fine, I didn't really feel the need to research it further....I have a job and i have a backlog of games. Thanks for your....."concern".

"Although the common BSOD reports on my Windows 8 laptop are alarming."

Got it.  So, for you, common is once. 

So as a "computer literate" person, you didn't go into the Event Log and check to see what event caused it?  I mean, if I got a BSOD, I would be checking out what the error message was, and checking it out against sources online.  

No, yo_john117 is correct.

Uncertainty is the reason cases settle and this uncertainty can take several forms.  To lose a case that you don't know you can win, would open floodgates to higher damages or possibly more litigation.  Not to mention bad PR.  A settlement spares a company from guilt, puts them in control of damages (rather than a judge or jury) and because the contents of a settlement discussion can be sealed and are off the record, no one will ever hear or know the actual truth. 

This was exactly why Sony did what it did after the PSN breach.  By offering something to impacted users, it nullified the impact of any case that could be brought against it by a consumer.  Sony repaired any damage by offering credit insurance and by offering gifts worth a monetary value.  Some governments did file lawsuits against Sony for the breach, but that's a different story.

If a company is worried about litigation costs, it generally settles early on, before trial.   In fact, it's within a companies best interest to settle early.  Sony didn't.  They settle four years after the case was filed and a year after the trial began.  When a company settles after trial has begun, it's typically a sign that the case isn't going their way, is having a negative effect on business, or involves higher management that may know more details on the issue than the company wants to reveal, among other reasons. 

In this case, Sony likely knew the problem existed, and they likely knew that it would have a negative effect on sales if they lost in trial (cases themselves can have a negative impact, which is why many companies settle early).

Of course One won't have as bad of a RRoD problem as 360, MS still denies the high failure rate of the 360, and never did release a 360 fat which included the two $0.50 clips which hold the motherboard fixing this problem.

With the One, they have learnt how to cover up for mass failures even better.