Mile
Zero

With the new XBox experience (will not capitalize!) out, it seems appropriate to put this back up in case anyone's looking to fill out their fancy new friend list.

My impressions, after 15 minutes of flipping around in it this morning, is that it's certainly a bit easier to use but still a little sluggish in places. I haven't had a chance to look at the new Marketplace yet, but I didn't spend enough time in the old one to feel one way or the other about it. The new avatars are a welcome addition, if a bit generic, with a lot more options than the Wii version (but a lot less ability to abuse the toolkit, too).

The biggest feature that we'll use as a household will be the Netflix streaming. I streamed 5 minutes of a 30 Rock episode this morning and it looked great--better than what we see on cable, honestly, but that's not saying much. Not quite DVD quality, but close.

I'd hoped that the prime feature for us would be the hard drive install, so we could cut down on the disc-swapping between The Wire DVDs and whatever I'm playing at the moment. Then I remembered that there's still a disc-check, so we'll have to swap anyway. I guess it'll be a bit quieter, at least.