This is my first time buying a 360 and I'm conflicted on which one to get.

Refurb'd 20gb Pro w/ two wireless controllers and three games $199 plus tax
or
Elite w/ two wireless controllers and 1 game $299 plus tax

Does the 20gb hard drive fill up fast?

This is my first time buying a 360 and I'm conflicted on which one to get.

Refurb'd 20gb Pro w/ two wireless controllers and three games $199 plus tax
or
Elite w/ two wireless controllers and 1 game $299 plus tax

Does the 20gb hard drive fill up fast?

20gb wont last too long. You only get about 13gb free out of the box.

I wouldnt get anything smaller than a 60gb drive.

If the Elite is new, that's an easy decision. At this point, I would never buy a used/refurb PS3 or 360 unless it was dirt cheap.

If the Elite is new, that's an easy decision. At this point, I would never buy a used/refurb PS3 or 360 unless it was dirt cheap.

Refurb is from buy.com with 1 year warranty from MS.

Dont get a refurb because it is old hardware that sooner or later ends up with a red ring of death.

refurb is a BAD IDEA

If I was in your situation and was looking to buy a 360, I'd wait a few weeks and hope that rumored $400 Xbox 360 bundle with a 250 gig hd, Forza 3, and two wireless controllers actually comes to fruition.

Refurb is from buy.com with 1 year warranty from MS.

I would buy an arcade for $199(or less if Dell is running a coupon code) and snag a 20GB drive since demand for those is probably non existent. Even with a MS warranty, I would never touch a refurb for that price. Or buy the Elite if you want to install games to the HDD.

I would buy an arcade for $199(or less if Dell is running a coupon code) and snag a 20GB drive since demand for those is probably non existent. Even with a MS warranty, I would never touch a refurb for that price. Or buy the Elite if you want to install games to the HDD.

What is the warranty for a brand new 360?

1 year, but 3 years if the problem is the 3x red lights, aka the Red Ring of Death.

1 year, but 3 years if the problem is the 3x red lights, aka the Red Ring of Death.

Is the RRoD usually the problem?

At this point, a 20GB drive is a terrible idea. Such a bad idea that the 20GB drive on my bedroom's 360 is about to get upgraded to match my livingroom's 120GB.

Demos average out at 1GB a piece. Live Arcade games are sitting in the 400MB range now. And if you want to use the extremely quiet feature of installing the games to the drive, they will chew through about 6GB a piece.

This is my first time buying a 360 and I'm conflicted on which one to get.

Refurb'd 20gb Pro w/ two wireless controllers and three games $199 plus tax
or
Elite w/ two wireless controllers and 1 game $299 plus tax

Does the 20gb hard drive fill up fast?

Wait for the 250 GB 360

What is the warranty for a brand new 360?

3 years for RROD and E74 errors, 1 year everything else. Do you plan to install games to the hard drive?

Is the RRoD usually the problem?

definitely. The biggest non-RROD/E74 error is usually the DC adapter going bad.

And if you want to use the extremely quiet feature of installing the games to the drive, they will chew through about 6GB a piece.
- This is actually the most important feature, IMO. The Xbox360 sounds like a jet engine my room and I supposedly have the "quiet" BenQ drive. If I play the sound loud, it will drown it out, but during quiet passages, there it is again. 13GB of usable space in a 20GB is simply not enough, unless you want to do a lot of file management.

I install every game that I play and leave a few on there permanently. I can't imagine playing a game directly from the disc drive.

Yup, playing from the disc sucks. As such, anyone not installing their games to the drive is a sucker. Thankfully, Games On Demand is here to start the process of not even needing the disc anymore! :)

Three simple questions for console buying:
1- What do you want it for?
2- When do you *need* it?
3- How price sensitive are you?

What is a clearcut choice for one person is a Hamlet-class conundrum for another so no answer is universal.

If all you want is to play 360 games the Arcade is sufficient and current Jasper arcades are whisper-quiet. And you can always add a drive later if you find a use for it.

If you don't need it right now, then sit back and wait--forever if necessary--until you really need it. Prices will continue to drop. Why buy now if you don't have to?

And if you are more interested in getting a deal than actually playing then you really don't need a console and are better off saving the money.

Back before the Elite went down $100 I bought an arcade version and a 120GB hard drive for a total of $290, it saved me quite a bit for the same hardware as the elite. But now with the elite at only $300, you should get that.

Dell (http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1529751)currently has a nice deal for all new systems. I would not by a refurb if you can get a new system for this cheap.

Elite all the way (although I did see some NIB Pro's at Fry's the other day for $235) :).

Jason

I'm really happy with my 20g refurb. It only laster a couple of months before it red-ringed, but I shipped it off and got it back the same week with a new warranty. Warranty support has been a breeze for me.

I also own what used to be a new Elite, but when it died after a year it was replaced with a refurb. So why bother paying extra for new when they'll all turn into rufurbs before long?

You had an elite that got RRoD? I didnt know the elite suffered from that problem. With the new models you get the latest hardware, which means you get revision 11 or 12 or something of the xbox and not something earlier. It has the newest 3rd generation CPU and 2nd generation GPU in it that uses a lot less power and doesn't seem to suffer from the RRoD.

You had an elite that got RRoD? I didnt know the elite suffered from that problem. With the new models you get the latest hardware, which means you get revision 11 or 12 or something of the xbox and not something earlier. It has the newest 3rd generation CPU and 2nd generation GPU in it that uses a lot less power and doesn't seem to suffer from the RRoD.

Yeah I bought my Elite in late June of 2007 and in June 2008 I got the RRoD. It would have been pre-falcon. The refurb I got back is around the same vintage but has been running strong since then.

i would go with the elite since it has more storage

why wouldn't the elite suffer the same problems as the pro/arcade. it's the same internals just a different case and hard drive.

I have had my 360 for a few years now and go the rrod once. I have to mention just because somebody brought it up before. I picked up a ps3 the other day. that thing is every bit as loud as my 360.

The Elite is the same internals NOW, but it wasn't back then. Elite was the first to get the 2nd generation CPU in it. Thats why I was surprised that an Elite went bad, the CPU revision helped with the RRoD quite a bit. The new XBox's all have the latest CPU and GPU, and motherboard revisions and I haven't heard of RRoD problems since the last revision on the hardware. That is one of the reasons I got an Arcade and bought a 120GB hard drive for $90, instead of buying a regular Pro with a 60GB hard drive. When I bought my XBox it was around the time of the switch to the newest hardware and the Arcade was guaranteed to be the newest, the Pro was still about a 40% change of old hardware at the time.

The Elite is the same internals NOW, but it wasn't back then. Elite was the first to get the 2nd generation CPU in it.

Not true. The first batch of Elite use the exact same CPU as 1st gen XBox 360s. Quite a few Elites reported to suffer the same RROD issues. Even 2nd gen CPUs are not guarantee to not suffer from RROD because the real issue is GPU which is only updated recently.

I've got a launch 360 that I added a 120gb HD to. If I buy a new Elite unit can I migrate all my data from the 120GB HD I have to the new Elite HD with the cable & disc that came with my 120GB HD? It says the cable and disc are for one time use but wasn't sure what was actually meant by that.

Thanks.

Jim

Why transfer data to a new HDD of the same size? It wont do anything... Just stick your old 120GB on the new console and your done.

I think what it means by "one time use" is that you can only transfer the data from the 20GB to the 120GB (or 60 to 120?) you cant transfer to a smaller drive. The transfer seemed to add a bunch of crap onto my drive, I had to go through and delete a bunch of little game demos and stuff once I was done transferring my data. I dont know why it adds that stuff onto the drive.

you need a big hdd for 360 so go elite, wait for 250, or go home as they say