I wouldn't worry too much about lamp issues. I think we have 32 or 34 of the xd1000u under heavy use here. I had 3 or 4 that had lamps die under 400 hours. The lamps in all of the others hit atleast 1200 (which is actually good for the kind of on/off all day long abuse and dirty power that we deal with here). The ones that had lamps die early have done fine after lamp replacements. Its not that uncommon to have some bad lamps from shipping the projector with the lamp in it.