Same story here. I worked at Target for almost 2 years before I landed my current job... He speaks truth about the Credit Card quotas, however I knew plenty of people that never met theirs. Nothing was ever done to them, be them a checker, floor grunt, or supervisor. The only stress created over the cards that I remember came from the store-wide meetings, and even that was barely stressed. Far more important was the store's sales quota, which I remember being stressed constantly.

An interesting claim indeed. Surely the GP never played No More Heroes... gratuitous blood and violence, and only available on the Wii.

Eidos also carries with it the IP for Deus Ex does it not? It seems to me that I remember ION Storm being absorbed into Eidos when they went defunct. That would include their other IP of course... though only DX is worth anything to me personally.

I'll second the suggestion to pick up Chrono Trigger. I spent countless hours on that game when I was a kid and had my SNES, only to spend countless more when I picked it up for PS1. To add to the horror, they've now re-released it AGAIN on the DS and I'm still pouring hours there. Chrono Cross, OTOH, I didn't find as good. It was still palatable and I did finish it, but it never saw the same investment as Trigger.

Look up it's problems with Vista. I was unfortunate to buy it the first day it was available, before I knew about that glaring bug. I finished FO3 and clocked about 100 hours... I loved it. But it was FAR from bug free. The game crashed on me every hour on the hour like clockwork. To my knowledge it wasn't fixed, though admittedly I haven't checked since I finished it.

Aside from instability related to running it in Vista, however, I had no other problems. And who the hell cares if it was built on the Oblivion engine? Sure, it's slap-you-in-the-face obvious, but the engine looks good and I think it did the original FO's justice nonetheless. People should just accept it for what it is - not perfect, but it's still far better than most of the common drivel.

My Compaq M700 would disagree with your summation there. It's "business class" as you so put it, and almost a decade old now. Guess what? I've gone through consumer grade laptops fast, some of them don't even last 3 months (given it was a cheapo, but not all of them are...) I don't abuse them, they just seem to wear out with how much I use them. I still use that M700 every day for RDP and the like, and it's kept on trucking. It's all original except for a couple OS formats, and I've had nary a problem with it. The magnesium alloy (IIRC) casing might have something to do with that though.

Also, the dock still works perfectly. Perhaps you meant crappy Dell business class, or newer business class. I've found the older stuff lived up to it's branding quite well. Of course, I can only say that for myself... YMMV etc etc.

You know, now that you mention it, I do remember a 'hack' from a while back where you put foam or something on top or the drive casing's interior side which helped prevent scratching... and I've no grounds to argue the 360 isn't cheaply built, what with it's known thermal problems. I won't try speculating as to why MS would exclude that foam rubber, but that does seem a bit odd as I can't imagine they saved much per unit by doing so. Also, I haven't seen a locking drive in years though admittedly I don't run through them as much now that hard drives are so cheap.

Lastly, I'll say this. I don't have kids myself, but I do have relatives who are quite young and have such sensitive items as this... They've not seemed to have any problems with such sensitive electronics, though that may just add up to how their parents raised them. I know it was drilled into my head at an early age to care for my toys, bike, whatever have you. If only all children were taught the same.

Not sure what you mean about later PS2's not being able to be used sideways... At one time or another I owned every revision released here in the US. All of my consoles - up through even the latest slimline that I have now - are capable of being set vertically.

Speaking as one that has been affected by that cloudy ring on my games, it's not too stupid a thing to expect users not to move it while it's on. I'm not without common sense, I don't need to be told not to move a console with a 12x DVD drive in it... In fact, if a user is being responsible with their electronic gadgets (e.g. put it in the entertainment center or on the desk and leave it) there will probably never be a problem. With the exception of something like an earthquake, that is.

Even further, I don't see how this is even MS's problem - the 360's drive is essentially a COTS DVD drive with a custom firmware... the drives themselves are manufactured by many companies... such as Toshiba, Samsung, Lite-On, etc. If there's a technical problem in the drive, how are they to fix it beyond switching to another drive? And even then, you can't seriously tell me you'd take the DVD drive from your computer and move it around while it reads something.

Yeah, I have to admit I've never been sold a scratched disc. My Gamestop has always been courteous enough to let me check it like you say. However, I have a few friends who ended up with bad discs after the 360 cloudy ring thing. They came from GS, of course, but IIRC it was before everyone knew to check for it.

You'd have been glad to have me as a customer, I always end up subbing to GI when I visit. Of course, I actually enjoy it so that might explain my willingness. Trying to push Helios is a little over the top though... kinda like when they used to carry Zunes and NGages (though admittedly at least the NGage was targeted as such.)