A couple weeks ago I noticed Costco had the XBox 360 and I hesitated more then once. I always said I’d wait after the bestbuy debacle. What made me follow through with this purchase was Costco’s awesome return policy, I said to myself, “I’ll use it for a couple weeks and if I don’t use it enough to warrant the purchase I’ll take it back”. It’s been just a week and I don’t see myself taking it back. Key reasons:

Media Center

This feature alone makes up for the purchase because the not only does it work beautiful with the 360 but I can get rid of hardware and use unused hardware. The “out with the old” falls on the AverLink player, now listed on eBay. The hardware that just was newly dusted was “Yellow”, my big yellow PC that I made a while back that cost me a pretty penny when the AMD64 first came out. Now it’s a mid-high end PC that I just loaded Media Center addition on and it’s feeling fresh.

One thing Media Center lacks which I hate is XVid and DivX support. I installed this though and it works pretty good, I just wish it was supported like the Averlink especially since I can’t get HD now. But it’s still early and we might see a better workaround.

A couple other things the media center does which I love is Podcasting through newsgator. It limits you to three feeds but an awesome workaround is to create an Odeo account to splice all the feeds together. Then the other two feeds can be used for video feeds. Which reminds me Media Center hates codecs other then windows media, I wish if the computer played a codec thn MC would play the damn thing and stream it.

Everyone saying I should just get frontrow running downstairs or MythTV: I rather not. I don’t want a box downstairs that wouldn’t integrate nice (MythTV) and I want to stream the content without having to buy anything more (Mac).

Games

I have G.R.A.W, which is a masterpiece of graphics and game play and I’ve only played it for an hour.

Burnout is the same but better because I can just pick it up and play for 10-15 minutes if I want and it’s been a long time since I’ve laughed or smiled ALONE playing a game, the crashes are great.

PGR, I haven’t even played (it came in the kit from Costco).

And the best for last, Geometry Wars. The first game i bought from XBox Live marketplace (below), it was about $4-5 and it’s so fun. I can only describe it as a 80s space shooter in high-def. The visuals are illuminating and distracting with how cool it looks. Avery likes watching it and it reminds me of fireworks.

Live

Playing games online is the best. And how the dashboard makes it easy to see and connect with friends it only makes it better.

Dashboard

It’s true the MS guys that made the dashboard for the 360 seriously need to go get their hands on Vista before it’s released. Or is that why it was pushed back AGAIN.

Marketplace

Buy old Sega games (I think it’s coming since I haven’t seen any yet), smaller games like Geometry wars, download movie trailers, and the best ever download demos of released and future games.

My habits of a gamer are short and sweat. Demos work out for my benefit perfectly. I just want to play a little anyways and their free, perfect. Boxing was cool, full auto was cool, Online Battle field felt like I was stealing since it was so good and free.

Conclusion

It consolidates my old hardware, brings to life unused computers, gives me free games, dazzles my eyes with high-def goodness, streams music, video, and pics. What else? Nothing other then make Windows MC work like it should.