Not more than a couple of weeks ago, I fired up my 360 "Arcade" version to play some UT3. The loud whirring sound I had grown accustomed to filled the room and UT3 loaded up pleasantly in the background. I plugged in my controller for a fresh charge, and popped open my messages.

One was from some 10 year old kid offering me $100.00 from "his friend" to sell my live account to him. Hah, no thank you. Someone else was leaving Live for awhile. Sorry, see ya. And in my last message I was talking to lightsonthevibe about some in-game thing. Probably about how we're both fickle losers and take turns mercilessly pounding the crap out of each other to see who will cry first.

As I typed to him (knowing I was sure to cry first that day), I noticed the game in the background had become very desaturated, had strange spinning black horizontal lines, and was quite covered in static. As the music glowered, I began to sweat perfusely. Was it the dreaded RRoD? If it was, chaostwofivetwo surely must have cursed me! That sunuva...

Or more probably, I realized, I was just playing way too much, way too long, and in a room that doesn't stay very cool. Either way it looked bad. But then I thought: well... maybe my Mutlimedia Switch was on the fritz. That could certainly cause those kinds of line and static.

After I sent my reply I closed the message window and found that nothing I did to my Switch solved the funky picture. So I did what anyone would... and reset the Xbox.

That's when all of my fears were confirmed. I had a single red light on the power switch (lower right quadrant) and recieved a black screen filled to the brim with white text in multiple languages.

It said:  blahblahblahblah ERROR: E 74... please contact Micro$oft, blahblahblah.

Wikipedia defined E74 as my graphics card being fried from overheating. And thus began my hunt for replacing my gaming system began.

I went back and forth. The crux of my decision was not actually on which system was better (I'm already a huge fan of Sony and feel like a traitor with this M$ piece of trash), but on which system would deliver me the most fun for my UT3! I did weigh in some other things... like how much I'd invested in 360 games by now. And ultimately, while I should have gone to the PS3 for the larger community and not having to further support Micro$oft's clearly ambivilant stance on their gamer's dollar... I still went with the New, Sleek, Slim, and Ultra quiet 360.

I'm dedicated, I guess. The 360 UT3 Community needs people like me to stay with them or it shall die out altogether. Besides, I'll just buy a Ps3 next month.

So... by the end of the week I had a big white box filled with familar branding on my floor just waiting to be opened. The kid I talked to at the store glowed about his new Sleek----and all I could ask was "Did they fix the ****ing Graphics card problem, or should I expect this thing to blow up on me in a week and see a screen that says 'You Should Have Bought the Sony, Sucka' ?"

He ****ured me quite confidently that it would be fine. As I opened the box, moved the booklets and lifted the unit out, immediately I could see how he was so confident. This thing new system is vented like nothing I've ever seen. How can it be so quiet?? And then I remembered my research before purchase:

"...the inclusion of a large single fan as opposed to two smaller units. This is also helped by the reduced heat emissions from the hardware’s cooler and more energy efficient 45nm architecture."

Hm. Okay. We'll see.
Searching the box, I was a little surprised to see that while I had gained a new console, they were gyping me on a few other incidentals. The A/V cord had no HDMI, for example. Major suckage. Ports are the same though, so I can use my old one---you know, from that LESS EXPENSIVE version that just blew up on me?

Ah, black controller. Finally! You people with the 360 "Elite" don't know the pains of using a white controller. But at long last I no longer have to suffer. However... they didn't include a battery pack or charging cable. Instead they gave me two Duracells. Those two Duracells must have been where M$'s money went in place of the HDMI cables. I went out and bought the charge-pack the next day. It's a must have.

They included a better headset. Well, at least it looks better. I haven't used it yet. It's much smaller, lightweight, and no bulky plug at the bottom. I put it on, and it feels much more confortable than the old one. If you wanna rock it vanilla, this is probably an improvement. If you wanna spend 50 - 100 dollars more, you can get some really bad**** ones that put this all to shame.

Also curious was seeing the large black box on the power plug. Because I clearly remember reading:

"...Other features include chrome accents, an internal power supply, an onboard custom Kinect port for Microsoft’s upcoming motion control system, five USB ports, a HDMI port, and compatibility with existing Xbox 360 accessories and videogames"

Hm. Okay.
That must be one giant fuse in that plug.

Looking further into the box revealed only it's bottom and some styrofoam. It was a tad anticlimactic. I guess for $300.00 I had expected a small group of clowns to come out and throw me a new console party, and maybe give me a back m****age and apologize for my previous 360 problems. But Nope! No clowns, no clowny hands on me.

2 minutes and 24 seconds later I had it hooked it up and hit the power button.

I waited for the hard whir. None! It's now officially quieter than my PC, which is quite amazing. "Whisper quiet" marketing statements are dead on.

I didn't really have to hold the power button like I did on the old one. It's touch sensitive. Heaven forbid my cat's tail ever get close to it... she'll be accidentally facebooking for me from the dashboard! But it's cool. Touch sensitive is cool. Also touch sensitive is the disc tray---though the tray gives a uniquely small amount of time before it automatically closes on you.

Not really enough time to open a cabinet, open a game case, put back a game, remove a new game, and open the case. Because by the time you get to number two, the disc tray has already closed. So skip all the above and have your game ready before you open it. It'll save you frustration.

Also of interest: the new sleek does not support previous harddrives or memroy card units. You'll know this right off the bat with the memory cards, because there's absolutely nowhere to put them. On the other point, this is quite disconcerting to me. My last 360 dropped it's drawers and did it's business right before my favorite game. And now I can't transfer my game and save data over??! Lame. I read you can transfer it onto a USB stick... which would be great and all if my old 360 wasn't dead.

However, Xbox Live does have a way to recover your Live ID, and in doing this I was able to retain all of my Live game data, from saves to achievements... which is interesting as hell. Also interesting as hell is how I had to spend two hours after re-downloading all of my downloads from the "Download History" section. Of course this means multople restarts for each game as they update. Okay, maybe that's not so interesting. But at least you can do it.

No Blue-Ray. If you were hoping for it, cry now. It hasn't happened.

I haven't (and probably won't) test the built-in Wifi. I know this is seemingly a huge selling feature, but I would rather spend twelve dollars to run ethernet into the room than depend on Wifi. I'm a little concerned about how having built-in wifi is going to affect our online gameplay. Some people have terrible wireless units, or poor internet connections, and some have both. By giving people an easy escape from hardwiring in, we might start seeing even more in-game weirdness as connections break and snap back in. Only time will tell.

All in all, I don't believe this amount of work to be worth moving from the old system to the new. I've already dumped more money into M$ than I care to just to game comfortably. I could have spent less and played more with the PS3, and at very least had the excitement of openeing new accounts instead of the droll of recovering the old ones.

Even so, I'm not entirely unhappy with the new sleek. In fact, I can say I like it three times more than my old 'Arcade' version. It's very nice to look at, takes up less room, and was all in all a soliud purchase. If you're a fan of the Xbox, you will be quite satisfied with it. Times that by two if you're looking forward to jumping around your livingroom like an idiot when the new Kinect addon is ready. Personally, I don't like jumping around like an idiot. That's what imaginary clowns in boxes who never actually show up are for.

But I do think it's cool that it's Kinect ready, because I have nieces who might think that's the bee's knees.

So there you are. A ver long and p****ive aggressive digest of my New Sleek 360 experience. Have questions? Frag away!