I got my 360 elite in 2007 and it only failed the day Mass Effect 2 came out (Crashed during gameplay) and due to the error being an E74 error I had it fixed for free and no problems since.
So in all I have had the 1st 360 I ever owned.
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My first 360 went through a "half red ring", it was an Arcade Xbox... I later traded it in to gamestop, which had a sale on consoles and trades that weekend and I ended up with an Elite, now this was literally (and I hate to use that, but it's true) the day before Xbox announced the slim... I can't really complain, my Elite is still running strong...