M$

Recently, my Xbox 360 broke. Microsoft would require that I pay $150 for the repair, which wasn't guaranteed to work, or I could attempt to fix it myself. Turns out, I fixed the problem, only to cause another, likely un-fixable problem in the process. Needless to say, I was quite upset, and felt slightly screwed by M$.

You see, the error in my box was not at all uncommon. It had something to do with an over-heating of the ANA/HANA chip. Now, I'm sure most of you have heard of the "Red Ring of Death", an error which Microsoft will fix for free. The three-ring error that many people get is a miscellaneous error that is not diagnosable. It is caused by a bad heat-sink in the 360, as well as flexing of the motherboard. The error that I got, however, was easily recognizable by the 360's software, and because of that I only got a 1-ring error - which Microsoft does not warranty and will not fix for free.

My problem with this is that the two errors are caused by the exact same thing - namely the poor engineering of the 360, and the errors in the case and the heat sink. I decided to try to fix the error myself, and in the meantime bought a replacement 360. My thought process was this: If I succeed, my brother would buy the new xbox, and I would be none the worse off. If I failed, I'd have my replacement xbox, and gain a controller and a game. If I sent it to M$, however, they might fail, in which case I'm out $150, left with no xbox, and just lose money.

To fix the xbox, I stripped it down to all it's component parts, sanded down parts of the internal metal case (to reduce to flexing), and modified the clamps for the heat sink to get it to displace the heat better. I also had to heat-gun the motherboard in order to reset the solder near the chip that was malfunctioning.

When I finally turned it all on, turns out I fixed the xbox - there were no more graphics errors. But in the process, I somehow made it so that the controllers won't connect.

I read up on this error, and it turns out that this is a common problem even when Microsoft fixes the boxes. So, those people are missing an xbox for 6 weeks, then have to send it away for 6 more, spending like $300 in the process.

It's possible that I could still fix this problem, but unlikely. Perhaps I'll update this post when I find out for sure.

Needless to say, all this was very frustrating. M$ put out a crappy product that was not designed well, and it cost me $200. Honestly, I'm still frustrated about this, but the other day, I realized something: There's a reason that I immediately bought a replacement box.

It's a great product.

Especially since the new dashboard update, the 360 has become an amazing console. I watch all my TV through it, streaming from my computers. With TVersity, I can watch Hulu, Youtube, and others through the 360 on my TV. I stream my music, through it when I want to chill. With the netflix support, I've discovered new shows, and watched new movies I'd never had an interest in that turned out to be really good.

Then, the other day, I was a little bummed that I since I don't get cable, I couldn't watch the Inaguration. I got home that night, and the first screen that pops up on my 360 is an announcement that I could watch the Inaguration streaming through my 360 for free.

The Xbox live service costs me $50 a year, but moments like that are what you get. It really is a great service, and I hope that Microsoft continues to provide good online support and expanding their features.

Now if only they could get their hardware right...

~ Nick
technology has won and it cannot be undone