XBOX360 buyers beware!

For all my fellow XBOX360 owners you may know of the "Red ring of death" which is a hardware problem associated with the first batch of 360's released from Microsoft. The symptoms included the system freezing up followed by a red ring that went around the Xbox's power button. When Microsoft found out about this they issued a 3 year extended warranty for anyone who bought the first generation of Xbox systems.

Since then Microsoft has gone through an upgraded redesign of the 360 so that the Red ring would not be an issue anymore, but now there is talk of a new problem for the new generation of Xbox's. There has been an increased number of complaints that owners of the new Xbox are recieving the "E 74 error". This error is characterized by a black screen with a E 74 message in the middle of the screen. Early reports are saying that this error is due to a video hardware problems in the system and as of now Microsoft does not cover this in the exteded warranty given to the Red ring (WTF?).

So all you recent or potential buyers watch your system and if you see anything out of the ordinary make sure to give Xbox customer service a call to ensure that Microsoft covers its consumers.