Bnpositive's Blog

WARNING: This is a long one!

Some of you may or may not have noticed the post a few days ago about the Great Heely Debate of 2007. As people began commenting on my post, I responded in the comments to let people know I’d respond with a follow-up post later. Here’s the follow-up post as promised.

First, I need to clarify a few things that I failed to mention in my original post.

1. Kim?and I had already had an extended discussion that evening on the matter and had come to the agreement that she would take back the Heelys.
2. It was?Kim’s idea to put a poll up on the blog to see what other people thought.
3. Kim didn’t think my reasons (which I’ll discuss below) had much merit, or were any more or less legitimate than her own.
4. Kim agreed to submit to my request and authority on the decision, even though as she said she was disagreeing on the inside.

With all of that being said I’d like to say a few things to a few people:

• First to Kim, I apologize (which I’ve already told her in person) for throwing down my initial response and communication in the blog?as an “edict” without first having a discussion about it so she could understand all of my why’s behind my decision.
• To everyone that responded in comments. THANK YOU SO MUCH for your time to come to the site, read the post and share your opinions. It was great to hear from so many of you that I haven’t heard from in years.
• To everyone that didn’t understand why in the world I’d do this, or just disagree completely. Relax! In my opinion this was just an open and honest discussion about a question that crossed my path in life.

If you’re still interested in all of this, feel free to continue reading after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the 2nd clip from this morning. This provided a little more details than the first segment that was broadcast.

Here’s the embedded clip of the first CNBC segment aired this morning. The 2nd segment is better, but still looking for a copy of that clip to embed in the site.

A fellow b5′er got this clip of the first segment that aired today. He’s looking for the 2nd segment and I hope to put together a full clip this evening from my TiVo recordings.

The video quality is really bad. It was a reduced size clip that looks like it was then enlarged with much pixelation.

Another poll on the CNBC website asks users what console they are planning to purchase this holiday season.

Not a whole lot of response yet, but still my thoughts are how much purchasing impact is this having on the existing Xbox users shopping?

As with my example, there were a number of games we were looking at purchasing this year as gifts for my son. Sure, we’ll more than likely still purchase them at some point, but as of now, our plan is to hold off until the Xbox 360 is fixed.

I’m interested in hearing how this is impacting current shoppers that may or may not own an Xbox already. Let me know in our current poll:

Jim Goldman, correspondent for CNBC, has this article now available on the CNBC website regarding the specifics of the class action lawsuit against Microsoft and their Xbox 360 woes.

I’m not sure how Bungie Studios is tied into this lawsuit. I don’t think it’s anything directly related to a combination of Halo3 and Xbox 360 together, do you?

Goldman doesn’t think there’s much merit behind the lawsuit at all:

One note on the class-action status of the Halo case. I’m not attorney, but wow, good luck. It’s not as if Halo 3 is a drug where customers MUST take it for health reasons, yet if they do, they risk some kind of injury.

This is a game. Customers who aren’t satisfied can exchange it for another copy, and if that one doesn’t work, they can demand their money back. Pretty simple. The attorneys are the ones who will bank the cash. I don’t know: seems like a long shot to me.

He does think though that regardless of the legal merits of the case, the public relations backlash and cost to recover from the further hit on the Microsoft public image will have serious financial consequences as well.

IceRocket Tags: Microsoft, class action lawsuit, Xbox 360 class action, Xbox 360, Jim Goldman, CNBC

Go read this post on my Microsoft Weblog for all the details.

Update: Here’s a link to the 2nd report on CNBC video

A couple of days ago I hinted that there was some big news in my experience with my Xbox 360 Red-Ring-of-Death.

The big news is that I was chosen to be interviewed for one of the big cable news networks, CNBC specifically. Jane Wells has left a comment on one of my posts and asked me if I would be interested in being interviewed about my experience.

The crew was here yesterday and filmed the interview and some b-roll footage for a couple of hours after setup time.

The story is appearing on CNBC throughout the day today with more details and footage being added to each segment. I’ve watched two of the segments today and am pleased with the results.

On Jane Well’s blog post imaged above, there’s an poll that shows how many people have been impacted by this problem.

We’ll see if this gets us anywhere though. Obviously the point of the matter is to get my Xbox 360 fixed as quickly as possible.

The last story on CNBC talked about a class action lawsuit being filed related to this issue. Bet that will get some additional attention to the matter.

Technorati Tags: Xbox 360, CNBC, Jane Wells, cable news, red ring of death, Xbox, Microsoft class action suit

I saw this video earlier today on YouTube claiming a easy way to fix the red-light-ring-of-death problem on Xbox 360′s. I can’t imagine how this would work as a permanent fix. Has anyone else tried this? Have you had any problems since?

I’m a huge fan of Plaxo, the service that allows you to maintain and synchronize your address book, calendar, tasks, etc. online with your offline and online sources.

When I got this error message just now though, I didn’t like it. Are they trying to be funny?

For me it just appeared like they’re trying to cover up their problems and sweep it under the rug. All I did was a simple page refresh and the error went away. I don’t think this helps their image does it?

What do you think?

It’s been a couple of days now since I called Microsoft Tech Support (1-800-4MY-XBOX) regarding my issue with my 360 started pushing daises.

I’m hoping that the shipping box arrives today or tomorrow so I can get the unit shipped back out this week.

We had planned a few Xbox related presents for my son for his birthday coming up and Christmas. Specifically on our list of games:

• Madden 2008
• NCAA 2008
• Tiger Woods 2008 (okay, that one was for me)
• Guitar Hero 3
• Rockband

So, I’m still here, sitting, and waiting for my shipping box to arrive. Probably a little over-anxious, it has only been a couple of days since my initial call.

We’ll see. I know my son is really wanting a Nintendo Wii for Christmas. They’re a lot of fun, but I’m not really interested in purchasing games for two separate consoles.

Hurry up Microsoft, after all it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here.