BUT, it sort of reminds me of the early days of the motherboard issue that resulted in a huge number of early production XBox units going back for, in some cases extended, warranty repair.

It sort of reminds me of the original Pentium snafu at Intel, who at first did the 'plausible denial' thing until they relented and spent a fortune replacing just about all of the 60 & 66MHz units (remember when that was fast?)

It makes me think, admittedly anecdotally, that my home WLAN worked much better while my son's XBox was off getting fixed, and that the WLAN seems to work much better when he isn't using the XBox. Placebo effect? Perhaps, but...

It gives me pause to wonder if it might be better for Microsoft to be a bit less (non-)reactive and a bit more pro-active in addressing issues such as this. If it is a REAL problem, better to fix it and look good rather than to try and hide it and hope folks won't notice. I for one am much more willing to forgive a vendor that acknowledges a problem and then works to fix it, or even does a little work to debunk an unfavorable urban legend in the making, which Microsoft could clearly afford to do in either case.

An approach based on: "yeah, but the evidence is so far kind of spotty and you'll have to catch us in the act and prove it" won't be of much long-term value. Didn't Presidents Nixon and Clinton teach us that?