Jordan Lund

I'm going to make a bold prediction... Lost is going to wrap around back on itself. The collision between the timeline and the sideways verse is what brought the plane down S01E01.

Best Buy.com has already pulled the 80GB version. The PS3 hardware page only lists the 40 GB.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=abcat0703001&type=category

They've advanced since the GBA days:

My story from 9/25/2001 -

So here's my first experience with Nintendo's warranty system:

Earlier this month I had been playing Bomberman in the wee hours, got tired, turned off the GBA and put it on a wire rack with some other gaming equipment. The next few days were kind of warm, really sticky warm, I didn't feel like playing games so I didn't get the GBA urge for a while.

The day Advance Wars came out I popped by the store after work, picked up the game and came home to try it out.

As soon as I pick up the GBA I see a big, black "D" shape in the center of the screen, just off to the left a bit. It's about 2 inches tall and an inch wide. "Oh, crap!" Well, I put in the game and power it on to see what would happen, the game looks fine on the inch or so to the left of the "D", but on the right it's hopelessly scrambled.

The next morning I call Nintendo's warranty service and speak to David. I explain the issue and he states that Nintendo can't help me because it's obvious I broke the screen.

"Excuse me?" He goes on further to say that because the pixels are black with the power off it's the type of problem that can only be caused by an impact on the screen and impacts on the screen aren't covered under warranty.

Now the problem isn't that I've been playing games for 20 years and have never broken a machine, it's that I'm an A+ certified computer hardware technician. I've seen more broken LCD's than I can think of, this didn't look at all like a broken LCD. It looked like a whole bunch of pixels revolted and turned black all at once. If you press on a broken LCD in most cases fluid will ooze out and the screen will discolor around the crack.

That doesn't happen with this unit because there was no crack for the fluid to ooze out of.

(My personal theory is that the liquid expanded due to heat and caused an internal rupture. In other words, a defect in mfg. Ergo a warranty repair.)

David doesn't want to hear it, so I ask him for the name of a local shop that does Nintendo authorized repairs. He directs me to Sharper Video in Portland, OR.

Here I get the runaround, AGAIN, from ANOTHER guy named David. (I swear I'm not making this up.) He tells me that they can't do anything because it's an impact fracture. So I go through the story again, show him how to identify an impact fracture. I even make him a deal. Open the case, examine the LCD, if there's any physical damage I'll pay to repair the unit. If there is none then I want Nintendo to take care of it under warranty. David tells me "We can't do that." Why not? Well, apparently their deal with
Nintendo is that they don't actually repair anything. They just send the units directly to Nintendo.

So I call Nintendo again, speak to the same David AGAIN, I tell him look... The warranty is for defects in manufacturing, in order to prove a defect in manufacturing the case must be opened. The authorized repair center they sent me to apparently isn't authorized to do any repairs. I tell him the same thing, if it's a broken screen I'll pay to have it fixed, but if it's not they are legally bound to the warranty and I intend on holding their feet to the fire on it.

So David talks to his supervisor and gets an RMA for me to return the GBA at their expense using a special Fed Ex shipping code.

Today I get a replacement GBA back in the mail:

Repair total : 49.00
Less Warranty : 49.00-
Balance Due : .00

Enclosed was a photocopied sheet with a checkbox marked by hand:

"We have reviewed your description of the incident and conclude that evaluation of your components is necessary. Since the evaluation process can be lengthy, we have exchanged your components with product from our inventory and extended your limited warranty for an additional 90 days. We also cleaned or exchanged any games that were sent in with the system and checked them for proper operation."

A few months later I see a display unit at a retailer showing the exact same D-shaped mark in the exact same place.

Who would I least like to face bare handed?

Hands down... the food nipple. (Shudder!)

1) The ability to connect to a computer and drag and drop media files, music, pictures or video, without having to go through iTunes.

2) Support for some sort of memory stick standard.

3) Partnership with some wifi hotspot for automatic free access.

4) External speakers.

Oh, wait, my $160 PSP already does all that...

I wish Apple were 1/2 as concerned as to how people are ending up with broken iPod Touches this soon in the release cycle.

I disagree... this is the single greatest movie of all time (pops):

www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/

(also on both formats in December.)

"synchronized parallel processing with shared memory"

That statement is vague enough that it could also describe the 16 bit virtual machine that's been included in Windows since Windows 95. When you run 16 bit applications in Windows they all share the same virtual machine. I'm pretty sure that idea is going to pre-date their patent rendering it null and void.

1) DVD playback.
2) HDTV resolutions.
3) DVI/HDMI output

But all that is beside the point without the biggest change:

5) Release games that are worth playing. i.e. Games that aren't worthless collections of mini games, terrible childrens titles or rip-offs of the latest kids animated movie or TV show.

Wow... a lot of comments and not a lot of common sense...

1) The PSP has close to 300 games in release on the UMD format. There's no way Sony was going to release a PSP without a UMD drive because any new user would have to start from scratch and any existing user wouldn't be able to play their current games.

Would a xx GB hard drive be nice? Sure. But I'm not losing the ability to play my existing games for one.

2) The Memory Stick slot is on the left hand side under a flip cover, just like the current PSP. Whoever took the pictures took 3 shots of the right hand edge and none of the left hand edge. Since we don't see a video out I'm betting that's where it is as well.

3) You don't need dual analog sticks to play good games! Back in 1995 when the original Playstation first came out it had ZERO analog sticks. The Dreamcast only had one analog stick and it had the highest rated game of last generation (Soul Calibur). The Nintendo DS Lite has NO analog sticks.