Do laptop drives do this type of damage to CD's if they're spinning in thier drives? I honestly havent seen one do that, and we have four different types of laptops where I work. All of them are at least 16X drives, I believe the newer dell machine has at least a 32 X in it. Laptop owners need to move, obviously, and you can move and rotate and do all that stuff to a CD that's in a laptop drive - while spinning full speed - and get none of the disc grinding like you'll get in the 360. If people meant for the 360 NOT to be moved, they should have designed it so it will lay flat, instead of stand up on end. Either that or engineer a better drive. I read over on wired that there's a class action lawsuit in the works. A rep from M$ says something to the effect of "these problems occur on just a very small fraction of the units". I think it's a rushed product using inferior parts, myself. Let Sony and Nintendo learn from these mistakes, and we'll see who comes out with a much more reliable product.
At least when you game primarily on the PC, you KNOW what's going into your system, and YOU make sure they all work properly. And if you have half a brain, your cooling setup will be much better than any mass-produced product that's prone to manufacturing defects. Just another reason why I feel consoles are silly.