Online warranty company SquareTrade.com sent me an e-mail today claiming that, based on a survey of more than 1,000 Xbox 360 warranties sold through the site, Microsoft's console has a 16.4 percent failure rate.

Of those failures, the fabled Red Ring o' Death accounted for 60 percent of the problems.

I'm actually a little surprised that it was only 16.4 percent, but SquareTrade doesn't say how long it's been selling warranties.

Because I suspect the failure rate for the first batch of consoles sold in late 2005/early 2006 was pretty close to 100 percent.

Also, I highly recommend this article from an anonymous source claiming to be a Microsoft insider. Again, it's anonymous, but it has the ring of truth.