i fail to see how this falcon version of the 360 is a good solution to all those that still possess defective 360's already. It is great for new adopters of the system but not for those who were early adopters. They would have to repurchase a system to gain this added security.

It depends on what you can get on ebay/from a friend. After the live.com search I was able to only pay about $100ish for the difference of selling off my refurbed core console for a elite console, and I still haven't sold off my data transfer cable yet or the hdmi adaptor i bought awhile back. So the cost may drop even lower.

For $100 I got a more reliable system, 120 gig drive versus 20 gigs, and a extra wireless controller along with the HDMI cable, black headset (which i'll use as backup) and a sexy black finish that looks better then my old console.

Your telling me that isn't worth repurchasing for added security at the mere cost of $100? You'll pay $100 for out of warranty repairs through Microsoft anyways, and you'll only get a refurb unit in return with nothing extra.

But hey, if 25% live cashback comes again and the Jasper Elites are floating on eBay, thats the only way you'll make out better in the long run. As I'm sure the Jaspers will be even less RROD prone even if It's 8% or so.

Thats called progress. The RROD will be even lower by the time the 360 price drop occurs to enter the larger frugal/casual market.

Early PS2s broke, and broke and broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke broke and broke without Sony paying for their repair/replacement. Furthermore new Xbox 360 RRODs will get a Falcon type Xbox 360 back sans HDMI port if their console is older.

 You completely ignore the 3 year warranty with a new Xbox 360 falcon version.

All reports are that the the RROD issue has been improved significantly, but not fixed. The fix is decrease the amount of heat that comes from the GPU. So anyone squeemish should just wait for jasper.

There is enough annecdotal evidence like that given from Neogaf, and Microsofts 1 Billion $ commitment, so that most people can just get the system if they like the games.

But if you are an obsessive hoarder of gamestuff and still bust out your Nintendo once in a while and picture playing Halo 3 until 2020, then nothing I have seen would make me jump on board until I see a slimline 360.

As for Squilliam's point about electrical vs mechanical failures he was only partly right. For RRODs heat, a mechanical effect, caused warping of the motherboard, a mechanical issue. If it had shorted, or a component was defective etc that is an electrical issue. We don't know yet if the falcons prevent warping all together or just delay it from 6 months to 12months, or what ever.

But to the original op, take that thing off. There either do very little as a previous poster mentioned or sometimes they just make things worse. Just leave your 360 and the power supply where they can get decent ventilation, and clean the vent sometimes.

I am a huge Microsoft fan. Trust me.

But even if the RROD hit sub 10% on the Jaspers and Falcons, thats not going to get rid of the fact that the first, how many million units sold out there were NOT Falcon?

It depends on the person, but if that person gets a repaired RROD console and never has a problem again for several years they probably won't mind. But some people have gotten 2+ repaired consoles. On one of the forums I frequent theres one guy who has his console repaired 7 times, and he still hasn't received a new one from MS, just lots of free games and shit but still no new console.

MS has a second chance to leave a good impression on new adaptors, but their original followers/hardcore fan base they screwed up with the RROD, not the games.

Monsta -

The thing about the people that had the 2+ RROD'ed consoles never got consoles that REALLY fixed the problem.

Microsoft never implemented any real fixes to the X360 until April 2007 with the new 2nd heatsink for the GPU, and then the Falcon revision. Any consoles that were replaced before then still had the faulty mobo, heatsink(s) and so on. So it would be easy to have had multiple consoles replaced pre-07.

Now, I know that some are still dealing with the multi-console replacement woes, but it's been reduced. I remember when there seemed to be stories every two to three weeks about customer service woes and MS...But the vast majority of that has died down now that the Falcons are out, and most of the older, failed, consoles aren't out in the wild anymore.

And my refurb w/ the 2nd heatsink is still working fine - 1 and 1/2 years after it died.

Probably more likely to get an optical drive failure with the Falcon than RROD. That was the only problem I had with a Zephyr model.

 They have the new BenQ drives,no more disk scratching. Mine works fine and i have no complaints.