i'm thinking real hard about buying a xbox 360 but i'm getting scared and confused about what version of xbox is best and this damn red ring of something i see people on hear talking about. what causes this to happen and how can i avoid this from happening to me. what precautions do i take for not letting this happen to me?

Its caused by alot of different things but the main problem is the 360's overheat and the cheap metal on the motherboard would melt.

The new consoles have better material and better heatsinks so they don't heat up as much anymore.

i've had my 360 for a year and its fine and Microsoft are making all new 360's with better hardware like motherboards etc....

EDIT
Damm T3kNi9e beat me too it

Haha. You guys are funny. It is dubbed as "General Hardware Failures" and generally is caused by what T3k said.

Also they are constantly developing new motherboards and CPU/GPU set-ups to help the 360 run cooler and more efficiently. With the newest batch there is a much lower failure rate than that of the originals. Also you are backed by a 3 year warranty from Microsoft, so if it does happen you can get it fixed for free.

its not from overheating. ive had my 360 running 14+ hours straight playing gears of war non stop and it didnt overheat in a closed room.

i then turned it on another time and 10 minutes later it RROD'd, its from the shit that keeps the pieces inside together, sauder? or something.. coming undone. they used a real cheap kind and didnt do it very well when they first made it.