Faulty Xbox 360 consoles could be a Thing of the Past as revised hardware sneaks out to retail this week. Codename “Jasper”, no less.

Here’s a ‘water cooler’ conversation for a cold Monday morning. According to several tech-blog reports since Friday Microsoft is now shipping updated Xbox 360 consoles, hopefully putting an end to all the Red Ring of Death shenanigans that have plagued the system since launch in December 2005. The RROD has been such a problem that Californians filed a class action lawsuit against Microsoft in October.

An unfortunately high percentage of Xbox 360 customers have already experienced or are likely to experience complete operational failure somewhere down the line. You think it won’t happen to you but… then it does. Instead of the calm green lights you get angry red ones instead. This means your Xbox is kaput. On the bright side Microsoft has been excellent at getting faulty systems replaced within days, but even so… annoying.

However the newest “Jasper” models herald a new era of fault-free Xbox 360 entertainment, with fancy-pants 65-namometer graphics chips (smaller and less power-consuming therefore cooler), and eco-friendly 150-watt PSU. Internal flash memory has also been boosted from a measly 16 megabytes to a whopping 256, meaning that even entry-level £129.99 Arcade models no longer require a memory card to store the New Xbox Experience.

And by sheer coincidence, one of our personal Xbox 360 consoles collapsed over the weekend after two years of faithful service. Fingers crossed the replacement will be Jasper-tastic…