I got my XBox a couple of months ago and it has a Thompson DVD drive. About a week after I got it, certain discs (mainly SSX3) would start giving dirty disc errors. Rebooting over and over eventually fixes the problem.

After reading around, it seems this is a common problem w/Thompson drives. I just ordered my modchip, but I'm wondering if I shouldn't take it back to BestBuy first to get it replaced w/a unit w/out a Thompson drive before doing the mod.

Any opinions?

Try a cd/DVD cleaner in it they do get dirty evrn from the manufacturer

And yes if the drive looks messed up return it first before modding.
I've seen a lot of new faulty X-Boxes... however they were replaced by older refurb boxes!

personally, i wouldn't have even bought an XBox until i heard about the Samsung drives, that will play pretty much ANY brand/media

having to try a bunch of different disks to get one to work was not appealing to me

There is always this slighty underhanded solution.
Host a Halo party, when someone isn't paying too much attention to their Xbox, open it up, take out their non-Thompson drive and replace it with yours. Then put that one in you Xbox!

Seriously though, if you have one friend who only casually uses their Xbox and has a non-Thompson, propose a switch. They may agree to it and it's not like they really lose out anyway.

Just an idea.

As far as I know (From HSDemonz etc) if you intend to never play official xbox games and want the xbox for other reasons (what ever they may be) you can use any dvd drive in there

EDIT you may need to knock off the DVD drive check from your bios using xbtool though

Heck I believe you can replace it with another HD then