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(More customer reviews)I am extremely picky about any hardware I use. Having owned both models of the PS3 and a few Xbox 360s (that I bought and sold over time) I have pretty high expectations. Personally I think Xbox live is much better then PSN which is why I jumped from PS3 back to Xbox. My big issue was the hardware. Microsoft took care of a big issue by allowing users to burn their games to the hard drive. However, the fan noise on my Xbox Elite was still driving me crazy. Now my Elite wasn't broken, my ears just seem to attune to the noise they make. It especially drove me crazy when playing games like Puzzle Quest or when browsing the dash board. In this case the PS3 fat and slim where hands down superior (hardware build wise). But like many a fans I put up with the crappy build quality for the sake of a better interface and of course my friends list.
Now onto the new Xbox 360. Let me just say that for once I am very proud of Microsoft. They seem to have taken all the complaints from users and fixed them. This is the system they should have released long ago. The very first thing I noticed is how silent this machine is. Even after running for over an hour you can barely hear the fan. I would go as far as to say it's even more silent then the PS3 slim (which I found to be louder then the fat model). The new Xbox has a strange but cool new look. I don't understand why people are complaining that it is a finger print magnet. How often do you really touch your system once it's in place? The buttons on the front are now touch sensitive instead of pressing them in, and make a cool noise I must say. I'm happy to say that even my disc drive is quite. It's almost as quite running a disc as the fans on my Elite were. There are no old school memory card ports, but they upped the USB ports to 5. 2 on the front and 3 in the back. The new 250GB hard drive is removable. There is a button on the right side vent that you can press and remove the plate. The hard drive is in a special case but it's easier to move. The only downside to this is the people that take their hard drives to their friends house, but this can be fixed by using a USB drive now.
The controller is pretty much the same as the Elites plus a couple changes. The bottom portion of the controller that was gray shaded is now a shiny black and the Xbox button is shiny chrome. All in all goes will with the package. The ear cushion on the headset is also now black instead of grey. Microsoft also has a picture of a black chat pad and wireless headset on the box for the new 360. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a black controller charger.
To close, I'm extremely satisfied with my purchase. It's a worthy upgrade and one that shows Microsoft is actually listening for once. Also for those planning to get Kinect there is a dedicated port so on the new system which will let you use the camera with one less cable.
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Xbox 360 250GB Console
