I have found that the xbox 360 slim fixed all the major issues with the previous version and runs a whole hell of a lot better.  Ironically I have been playing the Lego Pirates game and it is quite good.  Due to needing different people to do certain things in each level it definitely has its replayability value because it requires you to do it several times or just waiting until you have all the crew type members you need to do it.  With all the replaying of just the stuff in the first film I have only just completed the first film storywise this morning but need some crew members from the second movie to finish up all the extra stuff in Pirates 1.  And furthermore still won't be able to complete all the levels in Part 1 completely until I get who I need to have Blackbeard's sword to unlock the final stuff.

On the subject of the xbox.  I have bought the new version and use it wifi and got the kinect as a gift.  I only have two games for the connect.  Adventures does tire you out in fifteen minutes unless you are a youngin.  Yoostar 2 is interesting but hard.  

My roommate is currently using the old 360 and had to have it replaced twice or fixed.  I don't know what they did but it seems to be working fine now.  

And for the person who says that who knows how long it would take them to fix it.  For me both times I think it was fixed and back to me within 2 weeks even though they say three I think.  

And the first versions of the xbox I think all had the E73 error.  The second versions I don't know.  But again the slim seems to be working fine.  The only issue I have had so far is that if where you have it is not well ventilated you netflix movies and games might lock up.  But just turn it off and turn it back on and also put it on its side (hot dog style)  On the new ones vents are on the wide sides so it needs the air vents accessible and it will probably not freeze.  There are also vents on the top and bottom but one of those (bottom has feet on them so you know which way to stand it.  You can lay it flat but I think it gets overheated too fast that way.  

Okay I have rambled on enough.  Sorry.

Again,  it's not a ventilation issue.  If you actually take a 360 completely apart you'll know why I say that.  The reason most of them had the error relating to the graphics chip was as follows:

1.  The crappy "thermal-tape" used wasn't effective enough at transferring heat from the chips (cpu and gpu) to the heatsinks.

2.  The crappy X-clamp design of holding the heatsinks onto the 360 mainboard didn't take into account what might happen if the board were to flex.....say from excessive heat.

So we had this happening:

1.  The crappy thermal-tape couldn't do it's job well enough so the chips/board got too hot

2.  This caused the board to flex

3.  This caused the stupid X-clamp to no longer have the heatsinks forced down onto the chips with enough force!

4.  This caused the GPU to overheat in seconds, freeze and throw the error code about a GPU error!

Some people on the internet even suggested wrapping the xbox in a towel and forcing it to overheat (the entire xbox instead of just the graphics chip and the area on the board around the chip).  This worked usually for about a week or two because what those people essentially did was to warp the ENTIRE 360 mainboard in the hopes that the heatsink and clamp would straighten out a bit.

The only way to correctly fix the problem/issue is to do exactly what I described in my earlier post.  Something I haven't only performed on my own xbox's but also on those of friends and family with a 100% success-rate.   edit:  oh and no two-week waiting period!  hehe 

the Monk 

That sucks and good timing well for the warrenty. 

To this day I have killed off 3-4 xboxs if I remember right (one was a Elite version too).  It sucks when you lose your system before a nice game launch. The total death count between my friends is around 15...  We even had two systems die at the same time (remember my buddies shipping those out ). 

I really don't play my xbox at all anymore (only for Forza 3 cat and mouse, a few games of cod, and a few games of halo which is rare).

This is one of the reasons why I love Nintendo. It's just nearly impossible to break their products.

Just google the Gulf War Gameboy.

Hm. I get hardware failure all the time. I just make it work. Usually holding the disk drive while my Xbox starts does the trick. If fingers are insufficient, jamming a knife in the crack takes care of it, but that has potential to scratch up the disk label, which while purely cosmetic is something I'd rather avoid if doing so is trivial. I view it as much the same as blowing dust out of old nintendo consoles, or working around bugs on PC titles. I don't mind any of those things compared to Sony's horrible security practices giving away credit card information, or any other awful worst-case dooms-day scenario we could dream up.