There are still a few Benq Falcons out there, but the Lite-on's are starting to take over the shelves.
Would it be better to get a Benq Falcon as a backup or wait until I get another hardware failure (which could be in a week, or a year) and get a Jasper which will probably have an unflashable Lite-On?

Balance between getting a more reliable(maybe?) box and having to buy another DVD or get an unreliable box with an easily flashable DVD.

The DVD drives are the traditional weak point for game consoles being that they are used so much and the manufacturing of drives intended for PC's never intended for hours of continuous use every day (duh). That's what I loved about the Xbox1. You could put your games on a big HD and not only are your load times instant, you are using a HD which is meant to be running all the time instead of a DVD drive.

It seems that the unreliability of the Xenon boards outweigh any savings on buying a refurb, fixable 3RROD or anything else, but are the Falcons any more reliable?

Falcons do also fail a lot lately, just wait for Jasper, I dont think that it will last much longer than the Falcons but it will be at least be easier to keep it cool...

I think I now have no choice. I stopped at a half dozen stores yesterday and couldn't find a single Arcade built in April 08 or earlier. There were some Pro's and lots of Elites, but no Arcades. If I'm going to be stuck with a Lite On, drive I might as well wait to be sure I get a Jasper processor.

Thanks