Yeah, those cheap bastards. But you see, the problem with your logic is, just about every god damn company in the consumer electronics market does that. When you activate the manufacturer's warranty you get a refurb back, not a shiny new model just out of the factory. Just what the hell did you think they do to stuff that's returned? Trash them!? Come on!! Geting a refurb right way is the absolute best you can possibly demand. Either that, or wait months for your own unit fixed, if it's even fixable.

And about the 90-day warranty, if it isn't against the law, and the consumer was informed, what's the problem? It's part of the deal. Just be glad they upped it in the face of the problem. Here in Europe, that sure didn't happen, as you must at least get a 2-year warranty for consumer electronics stuff (that's one reason why stuff is more expensive here). So, if anything, all that really says, is your consumer protection laws suck big time (unless you believe this should be regulated by the market, in which case you should either get a protection plan anyway, or decide it's not worth it and don't complain).

I don't get what the big deal is about refurbs. You send them a used, broken product, they send you back a used, working product. You win.

I was of the thought that if a product was anything over a 5% failure rate then a consume demanded product recall could be initiated... this of course hasn't been proven at all... i'd love for it to be taken further by someone who has been burnt... I wont be buying a 360 until i know this problem doesn't occur any more.

$800 per GB? I think you might have misread something. A good hard drive may cost you more but nothing towards the region of $800 per GB (considering that 1TB of data storage would cost over $800,000, when a RAID6 array of hard drives will be faster, more reliable, and cheaper)

Even your .40 per GB is too much, it's less than 30c per GB here (for a Seagate SATA 320GB) and that's in Australian dollars.

My wii had a hardware failure at launch. They sent me a new Wii within 2 days,with a pile of chocolates, some nice cards signed by miyamoto, my very own triforce, and a master sword.

Nintendo is pretty good about their hardware failures.

MS has too much power for an outside source to do much about the high failure rate, especially because they don't release their numbers. Maybe they will fix the problem...eventually, but I wouldn't count on it. Just goes to show you that those Japanese build things better. That is why I drive a Toyota and why I don't own a 360.

 Well if they feel the good PR of fixing it will up sales, and increase profits, they sure will fix it.

 I wouldn't be surprised by a redesign by next year. And Mircorosoft could even give a discount for people trading in systems they would have sent for repair. Again, if they felt the PR would be worth it.

 lol, really?

I completely agree with you Entroper.  I don't understand.  I work in Telecommunications, and any equipment replaced under maintenance, is replaced with refurbished equipment.  That's just the way it's done with electronics.  A few customers have even told me they prefer refurbished equipment.   One saying it's because it's equipment that was used and the defects were fixed.  They rather that, than to risk a new piece of equipment that may have failures or defective parts out of the box.

Though, I can kinda see a consumer having a problem with this.  What really gets me, is that someone writing an article for "The Lifestyle Technology Guide" doesn't understand how electronics replacements work, and would mention a refurbished unit replacement as being out of the normal or a negative thing. 

@ Hawk

But it appears the refurbs Microsoft sends out to customers are far more prone to repeat failure than new units. I understand why they do this though, as else they would be left with an enormous pile of consoles.

All evidence I read on the internet points towards a far below industry standards failure rates for new units. But the refurbs seem to perform far worse. Many people have given up on Microsoft to truly repair their boxes and thus do the repairs themselves by heatgunning the unit and adding new clamps to better secure the motherboard.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=595746