I wouldn't be surprised if it's cheap capacitors and some other inexpensive components that caused many of these problems. Kind of funny that if MS would have spent another $5-$20 a console, they wouldn't be looking at a cost of about $80 per one now to fix them.

I wouldn't buy a 360 until I knew it contained the 65nm parts. I'd rather have a console that never has to be return instead of one where it gets fixed each time it breaks over the next three years.

Saiyar said:

>>The maufacturing issues have been sorted out. They now use lead rich solder and the disc drives that were scratching DVDs now come with the protective rubber band. The problem with the motherboard flexing due to overheating should be sorted with the extra cooling and will definately be sorted with the introduction on the 65nm chips.
>Any 360 shipped this year will be much more reliable so you have nothing to worry about if you are thinking of getting a 360, especially with the new warranty in place. Just keep it horizontal and don't put it in an tightly enclosed space and you will be fine.

MS won't admit to any manufacturing/design faults since it they did they would have to issue a recall on all 360 with the problems, which would cost them a lot of money. The 3 problems I have mentioned (copper based/lead free solder, lack of rubber band on DVD drives and motherboard flexing on overheating. Ask me if you want a rough overview on any of these.) have been well researched and documented by companies outwith MS. Like I said two of these problesm have been shown to be sorted out and one has most likely been sorted out. I have no knowledge about the surge protector problem as this is relatively new and there has been no adequate investigation in to it by someone outside of MS.

Isn't it the height of journalistic integrity to have misleading or outright false headlines to your stories? No I didn't think it was and that's the reason I never bothered to even read the rest of it when the very headline for it is purposely misleading, what does that tell you about the author of it?

Where are you getting all this information?  Do you have any evidence for this? 

Most of what I know has been widely reported on the internet. The disc scratcning problem was well investigated by Kassa (a reputable consumer affairs program).

The solder issue was well reported about a year ago and was thought to be the main cause of the RRoD. The most recent report I can think of was given by a UK repair company called Micromart wher they detailed several of the problems, one of which was the solder. It was drying up and needed to be reflowed. They also said that this only affected models released in the first year up to Sep 06.

The issue with the motherboard flexing due to overheating has alos been talked about for some time although to my knowledge there has been no detailed investigation into it that has been made public. That is why I am not sure if it has been sorted out by the extra cooling, although i suspect it will be.

Peter Moore has said that the problems with failed 360s weren't consistent with just one problem. Sounds sorta like a machine made in the situation outlined in the article.