Back in September of 2007, shortly before the release of Halo 3, I finally took the plunge and bought an Xbox 360. I did my research, though. I had heard of the rampant failures of launch 360s, and I wanted to do everything I could to prevent it. I wanted to make sure I got a 360 with the Falcon chipset, with a 65 nm CPU. And since they had just come out, I went out of my way to find a 360 with it.

I had heard that the Jasper chipset was in the works, that made the CPU and the GPU are shrunken down to 65 nm. But I didn't want to wait. So I grabbed a 360 Pro with HDMI out, and it has been making me happy for a year and a half now. Certainly, I have had a fear in the back of my mind the whole time, but I have taken care of my 360, kept it in a well-ventilated area, and even adorned it with a custom faceplate so it is too happy to act up.

My fears elevated a week or two ago when Necros's Gmail status message mentioned having gotten the red ring. I blooped him about it, apparently he also made sure to buy a Falcon 360, and his crapped out. A few days ago while playing the underappreciated EndWar, my 360 froze up. I held my breath, as I always do, as I restarted it and it worked fine. Not ten minutes into playing some more, it froze again. For the past two days now, I have been able to turn it on, and play for five or so minutes before having it freeze.

It's a frustrating place to be in, because after reading around the Internet, I had determined that it was coming. Classic symptoms showed up, constant freezing accompanied by a weird short static sound, and no help by clearing my hard drive's cache. But for two days, all my 360 would do is boot up and freeze. It wasn't until this morning that it started freezing mere seconds after turning it on. I figured this was it. I stressed it. I turned it on and off over and over. I would rather have the red rings and be able to send it in for repair than have a 360 that freezes constantly.

And then it happened. The Red Ring of Death. Jeff from Earthbound has never looked so unhappy. I'll be calling Microsoft this afternoon. So now, I am wondering if maybe I should have held out for the Jasper chipset. But then, will we be hearing similar stories a year from now about Jasper?