That new console smell...

I spend a lot of time playing Xbox 360 games. Not as much as some people, but enough that I really detest the downtime of sending my console in for repair. Since the 65nm (jasper) boards started showing up in stores in November I’ve been waiting for the right combination of trade in value and available cash to replace my first generation xenon based unit.

Friday everything lined up just right, and between the standard ($80) trade-in value, the promotional ($25) bonus in this week’s GameStop ad and a gift card from filling out opinion surveys ($25). Out the door with tax it was $85 for a quieter piece of mind and a new controller. Definitely worth it to me, especially since it also opens the door to switching from VGA to HDMI at a later time. Once that happens I can think about hooking up my old Xbox, a Wii or any other SDTV device to a VGA converter and feed it into my rig.