Compard to XP, Vista is 2x as slow with 2x the resources.... and that's with alll the eye candy turned off.

??? Really so you've tried Vista with 512 mb of ram huh?

I'm not very familiar with that NVidia recall, but proper quality testing would certainly have exposed the RRoD, and responsible engineering would be to fix the problem upon discovery.  That did not happen and it wasn't due to "bad luck" but rather MS rushing development to an incredible degree.  Sony didn't do that and we all can see why now.

By the way I bet the NVidia defect won't have a 25-33% failure rate.  And I bet NVidia didn't stonewall and deny all reports of the problem until it was about to get slammed with massive lawsuits.

Actually the failure rate for the GPU has been listed at 20-40% and the warranties on the laptops gpus are being extended (RROD warranty take 2?). But the thing is, these designs were tested by computer hardware companies no less. Dell/HP etc were caught with their pants down there and it wasn't due to incompetence on their part. Furthermore Nvidia pretty much blamed everyone but themselves for the problem and denied it until the last possible moment.

The Xbox 360 GPU has a similar problem with its own packaging. The solder joints break and one of the simple fixes for this is the Xclamp mod which applies increased pressure to the GPU die to force the solder joins back together. Its even possible that due to differences in manufacturing vs test units the problems were not aparent until manufacturing due to the use of lead solder in the hand built testing units. It was only once they were mass produced that the problems started showing up en masse. No company knowing the full gravity of the error would actually go ahead a release a unit like that.

You misunderstand.  Did NVidia deny the very existence of the problem to a comparable degree?  Source on that failure rate please -- I cannot find confirmation.  Also, if I am not mistaken NVidia is REPLACING the defective parts, which puts them a step up from the "musical broken chairs" strategy of MS. 

(Based on this article I found, I'm happy to agree that NVidia's blame game lies were almost as outrageous as MS's.  It's hard to say whether the debacle would have dragged out as much as the RRoD denial if it were lowly customers instead of business partners breathing down its neck.) 

Please don't make shit up.  If you have a source for the test vs. production claim, then I apologize and ask if that isn't a sign of rushed QC and/or poor planning/engineering caused by it?  IIRC, reports are that there were actually some signs of a problem within MS but one hand didn't know what the other was getting burnt by.

I've not followed the RROD saga from MS to the T like some but I can speak from personal experience from Nvidia's "screwup".  I have a Dell laptop with the defective 8400M card.  I got a one year extention on my warranty.  That is it.  I had already purchased the 3 year warranty from Dell so it benefited me none whatsoever.  No recall, the only "fix" I got was to install a bios update that causes my fans to blow full speed and kill my battery life in what I purchased as an ultraportable laptop.  I said no thanks.  All this does is delay the inevitable and hopefully (in Dell's case) keep the card functioning just long enough to fall outside this extended warranty period.  Nvidia squarely put the burden of replacing components on the laptop reseller which I find pretty insulting.

I'm not defending MS or anybody in this matter and this has already gone off topic but I wanted to throw in my two cents.

*Ignoring boring operating system debate*

@Topic: "The Xbox 360’s defect problem will go down as one of the worst snafus in consumer electronics history." - the article has got a lot of work to do to convince me of this. I hear about RROD all over the internets, but I've never heard a single person in "real life" or the mainstream media say anything about it except when Microsoft extended the warranty. That said, I'm just starting the article, so it has a chance.

Edit: read the whole thing...interesting info about the process Microsoft went through, and nicely researched.  That said, I disagree with Takahashi's perspective on the business.  He seems to imply that RROD cost Microsoft the chance to be #1, but I don't see how higher product quality would negate the motion control advantage Wii enjoys.  Wii owners are not buying the system because it's cheaper or more reliable, they're buying it because it presents a new way to play games.

Well, I thank you for the refresher on recent developments in soldering, but all it means to me is "yes, MS rushed design and/or manufacturing (insufficient training on Pb-free) and or quality control".  I don't believe there was no way to compensate for having to go Pb-free unless I see highly reputable sources saying so. 

You said nothing about my NVidia point/question. 
You said nothing regarding my request for source(s) on your NVidia failure rate allegation.
You did not respond to my suggestion about schizophrenia within MS regarding possible early reports of RRoD. 
In fact, you did not even say anything that would support your suggestion that test units used Pb solder! 

All in all, I feel I have no choice but to wonder whether your post is just a red herring.

Food for thought:
Q: In your opinion what do you think the main cause of the Red Ring of Death failures have been?

RROD is caused by anything that fails in the "digital backbone" on the mother board. Also known as a core digital error. CPU, GPU, memory, etc. Bad parts, incompatible parts (timing problems) bad manufacturing process (like solder joints), misapplied heat sinks or thermal interface material, missing parts, broken parts, parts of the wrong value, missed test coverage. Any one or more, on any chip, or many other discrete components, would cause this. And many of the failures were obviously infant mortality, where they work when they leave the factory and fail early in use. The main design flaw was the excessive heat on the GPU warping the mother board around it. This would stress the solder joints on the GPU and any bad joints would then fail in early life.

There are also other significantly high failure rates in other areas, like the DVD.
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/digitaljoystick/archives/129866.asp

This guy knows what he's talking about; it sounds like the solder is a symptom rather than a cause, if it's even a factor at all.  I'd trust this answer more than random forum theorists.  

Great article. We can only imagine how well Microsoft could have done if the 360 had been manufactured with no major issues from the start.