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Opine: Red Rings of Dollar Signs
According to a number of sites (such as Engadget, TheXBoxDomain, Gizmodo et al) if your XBox 360 suffers from the dreaded Red Rings of Death (a form of hardware lurgey that is endemic to the console), there’s a trick you can use to recover your XBox, even if just temporarily, so that your red lights beget green lights. It just goes to show that Douglas Adams was way ahead years ago when he stated that the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy advised galactic travelers to always carry a towel.
I have a problem with this whole red ring situation in the first place, which is why an XBox 360 hasn’t yet graced the Bagder household. Well, that and I don’t have about $500* sitting around at the moment to pay for another console to add to my collection. My problem is that no piece of consumer electronics should be suffering from the fail rates that the XBox 360 is currently suffering from. Being frank, it’s the major reason I’m not willing to put out the money for the console, even if Microsoft has updated the warranty to a year and will give you a new warranty balance after returning (possibly the same) unit to you after you send it in for service. It seems that the units that are failing are failing at around the 6-12 month mark, and many seem to be fine after they come back from warranty (which means there’s obviously something wrong with the manufacturing process). This means my $500 spent to get a new console will average out to cost about $10-20 a week until it fails, and after it fails and I get it back (possibly costing me more money if it falls out of warranty) it’s likely I’ll get up to two years of usage before I either have to buy a new one or send it in for warranty again.
That’s not financially smart for me to invest in, and that doesn’t include the fact that most games are between $30-60 each at the moment, unless I hunt them down second hand or find deals (and you know I’ll do both no matter what). Let’s say that I buy 9 games at $50 average, plus the $500 I’ve spent on the console and another year of Xbox Live . That’s $1000 over two years, we’ll say. That ends up being $19 per week spent on entertainment for the Xbox. Not terribly bad when you consider the cost of other forms of entertainment that cost about the same. Let’s look at some:
- Going to the movies each week with Mrs Teh Bagder at a movie theater: $14 for about 2 hours entertainment
- Having a meal in a restaurant with Mrs Teh Bagder: $30 for 2 hours entertainment and a nice full stomach
- Buying 3 new paperback novels that week: $21
- Watching TV shows online legally: $0 apart from having to sit through forced commercials
Hmm. Now let’s look at stuff that’s cheaper:
- Playing the games I already own: $0
- Borrowing some movies or books from the library: $0 unless I forget to take stuff back on time
- Going to the dollar theater to see a movie: $2 on Family Fun Night, or $1 on Tuesdays for me myself
- Spend some time with my kids: $0
- Read any of the books or watch any of the movies I already own: $0
- Download some demos of games online and play those: $0
I’m frugal. I’ll admit that. I can’t justify paying $15 per month to play an online game, never mind pay $19 a week to pay for a console that is invariably going to float upside down doing the electronic backstroke. The problem is that I really WANT to get an XBox 360 and start playing it online with friends. Much of my gaming is done in isolation, but I miss playing with others. I miss having a group of friends to compete with and cajole and play with. I miss getting drunk and beating them all at Speedball 2 when I can hardly even see the screen because the world is spinning at an accelerated speed.I don’t miss it $19 a week though, even if games like Viva Pinata, Gears of War and Crackdown make my little lurgey heart beat 200 times a minute when I see them in stores.
As soon as Microsoft fixes the lurgy that comes free with their consoles, I’ll buy one, but until then I expect all my game consoles to be drug and disease free.
* I’m talking about the Premier unit, an additional controller, and an XBox Live subscription for a year.
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Deals of the Day: 14th May 2007
Copyright © 2007 I Am Teh Bagder.
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