360S is MINE!!!

Last Saturday, I got myself the Xbox 360 Slim.

My daughter was watching a TV show through my old 2006-era Xenon 360 (Windows Media Center Extender) and the fans on the thing were in high gear almost constantly, creating the jet-engine sound we all know and love.   My usual solution to this is to run compressed air through the 360 and hope the majority of the dust comes out of the new vent-ports on the unit.  

A ton of dust later, I turned it back on and the fans were still running in high gear and the thing was still making a ton of noise.  

At this point I'm thinking to myself: "Damn.   This thing will probably fail sooner than later and I'm completely out of warranty on it."

"Fuck it" I said.   I got on the horn with EBGames up here in Canada and asked them if they had the new one in.

"Yes" the clerk said.  "We have 2 in the back."

I then proceeded to inquire about trade-in values on the various pieces of hardware I had that I wouldn't need anymore and he answered everything to my satisfaction.   As it turns out they were offering 50$ extra trade-in credit on systems towards the purchase of new hardware and upping the value of any games that's above 8$ in their system to 25$.

I had a couple of games in my library that I had purchased at 10$ originally in my library so I was actually going to be making money on those.

I gathered my gear and I was off.

I get to EB and the guys couldn't believe how good a shape my stuff was in.   I had a 360 arcade box from my 2nd console that I packed everything in.  I still had the unopened controller that came with that arcade in there as well.   They tested the console to make sure everything was working and rang everything up for me.  

I walked out with the slim and had to pay ~130$ out of pocket.   The price of a warranty repair had my console failed.

I have to say that this thing is gorgeous in-person.   Sleek, sexy and most of all, completely quiet compared to the unit I had perviously.   My old console made more noise on idle than this one makes playing a game from the disk.  The capacitive buttons make an audible and awesome "ding" sounds when they are pressed.  I've also been reading online that MS has put in some overheating protection software in the unit where it will shut itself down if it's getting improper ventilation to prevent units from dying left and right.

I usually have buyers' remorse when I got something like this but I haven't had any this time around.

The question is though:  Should you upgrade?

Frankly if you have an HDMI-less or out of warranty Xbox, definately examine the trade-in deals that EB/Gamestop will be offering.  Odds are it'll be a worthwhile upgrade as far as sound, technology and overall power savings.  Anantech's teardown and testing shows that the Slim actually consumes more than half the power than the original xbox used up.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3774/welcome-to-valhalla-inside-the-new-250gb-xbox-360-slim/3

I bought an Arcade unit that was MFG in January 2010 a few months ago with the latest chipsets(jasper?) for the Original models and that one runs very quietly already.   It would be a lot more of a stretch to justify upgrading that one as it works fine and does everything I need.

In closing, HUGE KUDOS to Microsoft for having done a fantastic job re-designing the 360.