PS3 stops reading disks

As we were preparing ourselves, last night, for a Soul Calibur IV marathon disaster stroke. We had already played a match when suddenly the game froze. I rebooted the console and I found out, to my horror, that the PS3 would just not read the game disc. I ejected it and tried a different game, nothing, I ejected that game as well and I tried a dvd...nothing again, nada,zip..At that point I started to feel a little more than horror, It was horror with frustration. I tried rebooting the machine again with no effect.

Fortunately it will not come to that

I did a little search on the Internet and found out that this is a common 40GB PS3 failure. I was furious but somewhat relieved to know that this is a known issue. I mean, a known issue does probably have a remedy that could be performed by me right? Wrong. I tried all the procedures explained in various forums with people having a similar problem but at the end I gave up admitting the fact that my beloved PS3 had a serious hardware failure. I had heard about the XBOX360 hardware failures and I was somewhat happy that I had a console that was strurdy build with no known issues, but I guess I was wrong. Knowing the XBOX story I knew that Microsoft was replacing machines for people that reported problems, so I thought that the same procedure would be followed by Sony. For once, fortunately, I was right.

This morning I called Sony and they told me to send the PS3 back and that they will replace it for me at their expense, they will even pay for the currier company to send it to them. Despite the whole discomfort of being left without my main media center device I feel relieved. I mean PS3 is no cheap console and if I had to replace it myself I would not be happy at all. The guy at support told me that they would extend the warranty for another three months, but what happens if the same thing happens after the warranty ends. I do not even want to think about it...