Taking on Microsoft Part 1
Categories : Games, Technology |
There’s some big corporations that people just love to hate. For example in Australia the number 1 culprit is probably Telstra, and maybe the big banks (although I must say my bank NAB are always fantastic! Hope they take note of this free publicity when I hit them for another big loan in a couple of weeks…)
But on a worldwide scale there is no company that people love to loathe more than computer giant Microsoft. Bill Gates, his company and it’s products are the object of more scorn and criticism than most other companies put together. Now let me just say that I’m not an obsessive Microsoft hater – I like Bill Gates, especially in view of his philanthrophy, and I generally like Microsoft products. So it is with an open mind that I commence this series of blog posts.
The story begins a month or longer ago when Owen began to notice that the XBox 360 games console (made by Microsoft, in case you didn’t know or weren’t at our church quiz nite on Saturday) was occaisionally freezing up whilst playing his favourite game Lego Star Wars II. I also noticed that the performance of the Xbox media center was getting worse and worse, freezing more and more often. Usually these problems could be fixed by restarting the Xbox, which was a hassle but I wasn’t too bothered.
Until one day the Xbox 360 stopped working entirely – nothing came up on the screen and 3 red lights surrounded the power button on the console. I googled this problem and found that it is ominously referred to as the Red Ring of Death. After further hunting I was able to press various buttons to get an exact error code from the sequence of lights – 0102. Sadly this is a code which means there is an unknown error and the console does not know what is wrong. I found various bizarre solutions on the web including blasting compressed air through the system and adding strategic bits of foam inside but was not brave enough to try them.
Fortunately, after being too busy to do anything about it for a week or two I checked on Sunday to discover that it is still under Warranty and even better, I was able to find the receipt. So yesterday I commenced dealings with Microsoft to try and get this baby fixed or replaced … it will be very interesting to see how this company peforms… more about that in Part 2….
