Man, this was a bad week to be an electrosexual for me. Both my MacBook Pro's battery and power adapter failed, as well as my Xbox 360 (the Red Ring of Death is a glowing nerd stop sign: "Go outside!"). Fortunately, both Apple and Microsoft have quite respectable service and warranties that have saved my week. Thanks to my AppleCare warranty on my MBP, a thirty minute call to Apple's support line resulted in a next day delivery with replacement parts. So long as I send back my faulty parts, this will be a free (yeah, I already paid for the service, I know) replacement. This warranty has already paid for itself, as I can call with pretty much any OS X, hardware or software issue and I can get through to an agent without a charge.

Just a few minutes ago, I got off the phone with an Xbox support agent who quickly helped me register my 360, answered my questions and set up a ticket for me to send back my red ring'd system. Since Microsoft finally fessed up to this being a manufacturing defect, they're covering the cost of shipping and repair. The only thing that peeves me about this is they will replace the broken components with the exact same faulty components rather than putting in a newer, smaller chip that generates less heat, and a larger heat sink. Why would they repair a system that failed due to faulty components... with faulty components? This seems cheap and disingenuous, Microsoft.

(Just for the record, electrosexual not Electrosexual.)