You made me curious, so I ran my camera phone around the house.  Apprently I must not be a dirty person compared to what some of you are describing.

PS3: (moved once, but never really cleaned it besides wiping off the top as seen later)  I bought it last December.

OMG, Cobwebs!

 Not a whole lot of dust on top, but I did wipe it off a few weeks back

Probably irrelivant, but I thought... I wonder what the inside of my reciever looks like that I bought in 2001... (sorry, bad photo... but damn if it's not pretty dust free)

Not too bad!

My PC: (ignore the 6800GT... I'm waiting on the 8800GT to be in stock again) ...

Not too bad...

But I missed a spot:

Some of you dont seem to understand that people that live in a rural area, or in an area with dirt roads (there are alot them around me and Im right in the middle of suburban southern california) get ALOT of dust, and it collects fast, also if they are around train tracks or farm equipment or Horses, all that dust is kicked up, and sucked into the house.

My PS3 has been sitting in the same spot for only three months, but it has zero dust on it or in the grills, my 360 is almost 2 years old and only has a tiny portion of dust in its fans.

My friend lives by an open field with horses, and a train track and has a dirt road leading to his house, his 360 needs to be blasted out every month, and it has ALOT of dust in and around it.

Personally I find it suspect that all this happened at the onset of the Holiday season just before the PS3 price drops. Sounds more like Guerrilla Marketing to me. You would know it would take some time for Sony to react to a single complaint, it would take more time to get the permission to release the pictures and even more time for those pictures to find all the places where this tool posted his "story"

Which I might add was every website I currently go to for gaming news, and I go to alot.

People read too much into this. I dont see this holier than thou, righteous bull crap about the red rings, or about the flimsy Wii construction.

Actually, that receiver image above... (the horrible blue over lit one after the PS3) was at my parent's house for a good two years when I was out of state (early 2002- late 2003). They live in an old farmhouse led by a stone drive and surrounded by 300 acre of fields that get regular crop rotations. Oh, and my parents don't have A/C. It's isn't all that bad, they leave windows open and the cross breeze tends to keep things pretty cool... but you know. They actually close the windows when it's time for the farmers to come in and plant the winter wheat or seed in soy beans. If it gets too hot, they pull out a few fans and circulate the cool air around the house. I mean, it makes sense. Why would they want to have two inches of dirt covering everything in the house. That's ludicrous.

My point is, if your going to spend $400-600+ on electronics, your going to take at least some initiative to protect it, unless your an idiot, your looking for something to complain about, or as you pointed out... your getting something in return. ($$)

Wow, now THATS dirty.

What I still don't understand is, what's the big deal with console replacement here? I seem to recall a lot of people saying that dust isn't a big deal and this whole thing was his fault for not just opening it and using a can of air on it. Why can't Sony do the same?

I can't believe this is causing such a stir. The guy did not take care of his PS3, it's in horrible shape and he's even said that he knows people that has even worse dust problems with their PS3 (if anyone could believe that BS). http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/132329.html?playlist=featured . Honestly, if only we can all go back into time and send all our NES cartridges to Nintendo tech support so they could blow the bottom for us, since apparently some people cant do it for themselves.

I side with Sony, its compete neglect. "All consoles collect dust" no sh*t thats why you clean them.

I completely agree that the console pictured has been neglected and shouldn't be under warranty, I just find it hard to believe that anyone could let their console get that bad.

Seriously, I've had things that haven't been moved in my room back home that haven't been moved in years and they aren't that bad. There's places on my parents farm that are cleaner than that thing. I know that electronics can get pretty dusty, I just can't see how something can get as dusty as the inside of that cover by just sitting in an entertainment center.