I'm in ur xbox profile stealin ur friends

[Marek]

So, what do you guys think of the latest Xbox Dashboard update? I'm glad they cleaned up the Marketplace and I'm happy with all the new features.

There's a free Psychonauts gamerpic and theme pack if you look in the Xbox Originals section. I saw it first though and get first dibs.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Not seen it all yet, but I will do when I get home. The thing about Microsoft is that they might not get it right straight away, but give them some time and they'll get around to fixing it

It's happened with the Zune, it happened with Windows and now it's happened with the XBox 360... I hope!

[Roderick]

Windows? Vista's a huge step back in my opinon But it's good to hear they're chipping away at the little deficiencies of the 360. Very soon it'll be my first anniversary of telling myself I was going to buy an Xbox in a few weeks. Here's hoping it won't see its second

[ThunderPeel2001]

Step back? In what way? It's superior in nearly every way... (Rather than get OT, maybe we should continue this via PMs if you like?)

Peter Bright did a great job explaining the changes and rational behind Vista. Well worth a read if you're interested:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/vista-under-the-hood.ars

[elmuerte]

What?! No cat picture in a thread with that title?

It's an outrage I tell you.

[Nappi]

On the one hand, these kind of cool features and all the interesting new games really make me want to buy an Xbox. On the other hand, my friend just got his machine back from the repair service only to realize that instead of replacing the faulty disk drive, they somehow decided to change the motherboard. Now, in addition to being a potentional disk killer, the console regulary freezes on startup.

[n0wak]

What?! No cat picture in a thread with that title?

It's an outrage I tell you.

What reading comments arguing in favour of Vista over XP make me feel like:

http://www.subversivecrossstitch.com/boone.html

I'm looking forward to checking out the update when I get home. Cautiously. My XBox died shortly after the Spring Update

[Ginger]

Step back? In what way? It's superior in nearly every way... (Rather than get OT, maybe we should continue this via PMs if you like?)

Peter Bright did a great job explaining the changes and rational behind Vista. Well worth a read if you're interested:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/vista-under-the-hood.ars

I'd be interested in hearing such arguements, u could start a new thread.

[Wrestlevania]

Agreed -- Vista is a usability travesty.

[elmuerte]

usability travesty.

sounds like a good title for a Leslie Nielson movie.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Well, I updated and there's Psychonauts... YAY!

Except... it's a 5.3gig install. Nearly half of my "20"gig harddrive

In fact, there's not enough space on my HD to install two or three of these games... ARGH! What's the point with such a tiny HD??

[eljay]

The point is they are trying to encourage more users to upgrade to the 120GB HDD.....

[elmuerte]

Well, I updated and there's Psychonauts... YAY!

Except... it's a 5.3gig install. Nearly half of my "20"gig harddrive

In fact, there's not enough space on my HD to install two or three of these games... ARGH! What's the point with such a tiny HD??

How is 5.3GiB nearly half of 20GB (~19GiB)? It's not even 1/3rd.

[n0wak]

How is 5.3GiB nearly half of 20GB (~19GiB)? It's not even 1/3rd.

Half of his drive since, I assume, he has loads of stuff on there already.

[Ginger]

Well, I updated and there's Psychonauts... YAY!

Except... it's a 5.3gig install. Nearly half of my "20"gig harddrive

In fact, there's not enough space on my HD to install two or three of these games... ARGH! What's the point with such a tiny HD??

I'm confused, is that on the xbox 360, u have to install games, or is that jsut for DLC. Is it as easy to upgrade the hardrive of the 360 as it was the xbox?

[miffy495]

Just for DLC. But as the xbox originals games are DLC, you have to download a full image of the original disc. I bought Crimson Skies (at 4.3 GB) and have the other games that I want to play around the Xbox in disc form so I didn't have to worry about it. Still, with demos around a gig and DLC packs for games like Crackdown about that size as well, it it a bit much to ask of the original 360 HDD. The upgrade would be remarkably simple. You just press a button to detach the current one and click the new one into place. The problem is that MS is charging ridiculous prices for the 120 GB HDDs. I'd still do it if I weren't unsure if I'd be able to keep the offline rights to my XBLA games. I heard somewhere that if you aren't using the original HDD, you can only play your XBLA games if you're logged into live. With the instability of my wireless connection, that just wouldn't do.

[twmac]

Yeah Miffy, this seems to be true. A friend of mine just recently had his system refurbished and when he put the Hard drive into the new console (they didn't fix it they sent him another), unless he is logged into Xbox LIVE, most of his games revert back to Trial versions even when he has the gamer profile he used to download them signed in.

Which is absolutely rubbish.

[eljay]

It is a problem if you replace the console, but when you upgrade the HDD it comes with a cable to migrate everything from one HDD to the other, which I believe includes its "identity" so to speak.

I could be wrong of course as I haven't done this, you'd hope they weren't THAT stupid though...

[ThunderPeel2001]

How is 5.3GiB nearly half of 20GB (~19GiB)? It's not even 1/3rd.

7GB of your 20GB is reserved as cache for games and backwards compatibility

I read somewhere that the 120GB HD is so expensive, you may as well just buy an Elite

[Ginger]

But in the origonal xbox u could chuck in any IDE HDD, am I right to assume that's not the case with the 360?

[Nachimir]

I guess so:

Ebay has original 120s for around £90 - 100, and the 20 gig ones go there for £30 - 50.

Still expensive for a 120 gig drive, but not quite so painful if you can wipe and sell the 20. I expect to be doing this next year as someone is giving me a boggo 360 this month.

(Edited currency signs in there)

[twmac]

EB Games in Canada are doing 20GB hard drives for about 50 dollars cdn, haven't seen any 120Gb for sale though.

There is a particular make of hard drive that you have to use with the 360, someone told me it was a particular brand of laptop hard drive.

[ThunderPeel2001]

You can only use official Microsoft harddrives, annoyingly, which probably do feature just a normal 2.5" drive, but they also use a unique interface. Unfortunately I don't think you can even mod it yourself because of the annoying security stuff they put on the HD.

[Wrestlevania]

There's a daughter board soldered onto a standard 2.5" drive, which has their bespoke connector running into it I believe. There's some clever software gubbins and preformatting required before it'll work too, which I imagine MS do at production.

[twmac]

Well that's just pants.

Downloaded it and the only thing I don't like is the new sytem for downloaded games. They have cobbled together all your demos and XLA titles, this I find annoying as it means if I have downloaded full length games a long with full XLA titles they are all in the list together.

I preferred them to be separate.