Friday, July 30, 2010

The Red Ring of Death

aka, The Red Ring of Doom; aka, The Eye of Sauron...

Every Xbox 360 owner fears it, and I just had my second one. Given the heavy-duty workout this unit gets (it's the original Xbox 360, provided by Microsoft about 5 years ago), I can't really complain.

Okay, I can complain. It happened right as I was beginning work on the Games 100, our biggest issue of the year. Also, and rather suspiciously, it happened only two months after I added an external cooling fan. Since I started using Netflix streaming regularly, I was worried about the wear-and-tear from extra heat. I'd heard complaints about the fans doing more harm than good, and I'm bit more inclined to believe that now.

There was a time when I would have just ripped that sucker open and fixed it myself.  That time is not now.

Microsoft is sending along a new unit for Tuesday, which will get me back in business to finish up this section. In the meantime, we've been using the Wii for Netflix, and it does a respectable job. It's a bit cumbersome, since you need to have a special disc in the drive (?), and the image isn't as good, but it gets the job done.

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