DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

As expected, my refurbished PS3 arrived this afternoon. The turnaround was a bit slower this time, two days shy of 2 weeks, but I’m not complaining.

Opening up the package, the first thing I noticed that it wasn’t packed very tightly, as the PS3 could move around inside the box slightly. Not a good sign. The second thing I noticed was that the PS3 case wasn’t snapped in properly at one end (front, right hand side was popped up). This is easily fixed of course, just apply pressure to pop it back in, but again it’s not a good sign.

Starting the PS3, doing all the usual set up stuff, the freezing problem (right after the Sony Computer Entertainment fanfare music plays) is still present – it must be something to do with certain settings or something, but I did a quick system restore (not the full one), and it seems to have fixed the problem. The PS3 came with firmware version 2.42, so I’m a little bit afraid. I’m also afraid to update to 2.50, due to the various problems that have been reported so far. I think I shall skip using the PS3 much until 2.51 comes out and people have volunteered to be guinea pigs for it.

I did notice that, unlike my last refurbished PS3, the fan noise is more smooth. The last one had a creaky fan which I did not talk about, it sounded like it needed some oiling. The problem with refurbished PS3s is that you don’t know how it has been used by the previous owner, and while the faulty parts were replaced, the parts that aren’t faulty (but have been used near to death) are still in there. I much prefer Microsoft’s repair policy, where they try to repair your own console before giving you a refurbished one.

So wait I shall for 2.51, which means there will be at least one more post in this series of blog posts. Hopefully, that one will be the last one, because my warranty runs out next month and even if it didn’t, I don’t know if I want to go through everything again.

Update: Bad news. The wireless remote/controller drop-out problem has happened again, and what’s worse, plugging in the controller doesn’t work anymore. I had to do a soft reset, but the PS3 refused to reboot (the green light keeps on blinking), and so a hard reset was the only other choice. Not surprisingly, everything worked again after the restart. I’m now updating the firmware to 2.50, since I have nothing to lose anymore (and Sony tech support will probably ask me to do it anyway). I think I might have to send in my PS3 again. Damn.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 2:10 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.