His mistake isn't entirely unfounded. The XBox is constructed in such a way that moving the console while the disc is being played will cause the disc to crash into the lens of the laser and scratch the shit out of both. I suppose not knowing the details, you could confuse it for LASER BURN.
Coolers are a good thing as well, if you like playing for a long time.
Coolers are either unnecessary wastes of money, or else Microsoft made a defective product with insufficient built-in cooling. All they do is push air through, which the Xbox is already capable of doing.
Actually, I read that coolers can actually overheat the system if they draw from its power brick instead of having their own, because they draw too much current.
On the topic at hand: I'd look at what you have for the old Xbox and then examine what games you want to play on the 360. My tipping point at which I will consider buying a new system is usually 5 games. As for the fail rate, see my comments below.
Coolers are either unnecessary wastes of money, or else Microsoft made a defective product with insufficient built-in cooling. All they do is push air through, which the Xbox is already capable of doing.
While it's true that an aftermarket cooler is a waste of time and money (for other reasons I will touch on below in my comments on Neito's post), the original runs of the 360 do suffer from insufficient cooling. That's part of what caused so many to fail with the infamous Red Ring of Death. The GPU is poorly placed and the passive heatsink isn't clamped down tight enough to keep things from overheating and warping the motherboard if the console is in a poorly ventilated area. Newer models supposedly have fixed this, but I'm somewhat dubious as to the veracity of this claim. That being said, I've had my 360 Elite model for over a year now and I've never had any problems with it. Granted, I'm not playing Halo for 12 hours a day like some people, but the fact remains that mine is still alive and kicking with no problems.
Actually, I read that coolers can actually overheat the system if they draw from its power brick instead of having their own, because they draw too much current.
And you're right. The original Nyko Intercooler, which drew its power from the 360, was infamous for overloading the power supply and actually cooking the 360. Nyko has supposedly revamped the design of the Intercooler so that it now has its own power brick, but who the hell wants to have to deal with having yet another power draw just to play your console? All in all, if I wanted better cooling, I'd look into doing a bit of modding and throw the guts of the system into a Lian-Li PC-XB01 case, which was designed as an aftermarket 360 case to have improved cooling.
That wasn't caused by the laser: it was caused by your disc physically contacting something due to its rotational inertia when you moved your Xbox. It's a physical scrape. It canonlyhappen if you rotate your Xbox while a disc is spinning.
._. Then explain to me why a bunch of people with GAME WARRANTIES (as in, it gets scratched or stops working for any reason other than being physically broken in half, as my store's policy is) come in with perfect circles on the games, and they are like, "... We didn't touch it at all - it just came out like this and won't work." Thus, laser burn.
Coolers - and I forgot about the power source part, I always do for some weird reason - do actually work. It helps push the air through better, getting hot air out and fresh air in. YES this is not a good thing that you have to get it seperately in order to make it work better, it is a bad thing on Microsoft's part, but.. it's simply helpful.
Then explain to me why a bunch of people with GAME WARRANTIES... come in with perfect circles on the games, and they are like,
They have the XBox set vertically, and they knock it over or otherwise jostle it (likely via a wired controller) while the disc is spinning. Of course, people trying to get their money refunded won't tell you this (partly because they don't want to sound stupid, but there's no other way for it to happen.
Thus, laser burn.
Laser burn is a terrible name for this problem, as it has nothing to do with the laser. The lasers in read-only disk devices CANNOT cause burns like that. Even disc BURNERS don't have the power to cause damage of that scale. It's nothing more than rotational inertia coupled with ineffective damping.
They have the XBox set vertically, and they knock it over or otherwise jostle it (likely via a wired controller) while the disc is spinning.
I have it set up vertically because of lack of room. Does anyone know how serious this problem is and if I should do something about it? I've got most of my games installed to the hard drive so the disk isn't spinning most of the time.
They have the XBox set vertically, and they knock it over or otherwise jostle it (likely via a wired controller) while the disc is spinning.
I have it set up vertically because of lack of room. Does anyone know how serious this problem is and if I should do something about it? I've got most of my games installed to the hard drive so the disk isn't spinning most of the time.
Only one of my discs had this happen, and it was because a stupid friend moved the xbox while it was spinning.
Also, keep in mind that much of the parts in the XBoxes are just normal computer parts. I've heard of a lot of people replacing the disc drives in their XBoxes with better ones.
Please forgive me if this question is stupid. I've looked online and I can't find a definite answer. Would an Xbox 360 connect to Xbox live by a wireless connection or through an ethernet connection? Does it matter what level of Xbox 360 you get to get a good Xbox live connection? If you already have a wireless router providing internet for two computers in the house, can the Xbox 360 use that same router?
Please forgive me if this question is stupid. I've looked online and I can't find a definite answer. Would an Xbox 360 connect to Xbox live by a wireless connection or through an ethernet connection? Does it matter what level of Xbox 360 you get to get a good Xbox live connection? If you already have a wireless router providing internet for two computers in the house, can the Xbox 360 use that same router?
1)Out of the box, It's Ethernet, but you can buy a wireless adapter thingy in most stores. 2)Not as far as I know. 3)Probably, but I can't tell you for sure. Worked fine for me.
Please forgive me if this question is stupid. I've looked online and I can't find a definite answer. Would an Xbox 360 connect to Xbox live by a wireless connection or through an ethernet connection? Does it matter what level of Xbox 360 you get to get a good Xbox live connection? If you already have a wireless router providing internet for two computers in the house, can the Xbox 360 use that same router?
You get a free 1 month of membership when you make your first live acount on the Xbox. After that you have to pull out your wallet. As for the wireless, you can buy an official dongle to plug in. That should work with most (read, I'm 99% sure it'll work with your setup) wireless routers/hubs. You might not be able to stream HD content from your PC over wireless, but otherwise that should work fine.
You want the cheapest one with a hard drive, I think the Pro is what they call it. You don't need the Elite unless you really really need a black xbox.
Wow! $100 for black plastic and an HDMI cable. Even a ripoff Monster Cable is probably a better deal than that.
Seriously, just buy the cheapest HDMI cable available at Radio Shack. They're all the same.
Well, the Elite comes with a 120 GB Hard Drive, the pro only with a 60 GB (and used to be 20 GB). However, it's still a rip-off. The 120 GB HD alone costs $160, also a rip-off.
Please forgive me if this question is stupid. I've looked online and I can't find a definite answer. Would an Xbox 360 connect to Xbox live by a wireless connection or through an ethernet connection? Does it matter what level of Xbox 360 you get to get a good Xbox live connection? If you already have a wireless router providing internet for two computers in the house, can the Xbox 360 use that same router?
As someone who has a 360 hooked up through wireless as well as a Gold account, I can answer these questions! 1. The 360 has an ethernet port built in on the back. If you can't or don't want to hook it up through a wired connection, you can either drop $100 on a brand new 360 wireless adapter (which hooks up through a USB port on the back of the 360 and can be had for cheaper on most online retailers) or hook your 360 up to a separate wireless bridge. 2. That depends on what you mean by "good xbox live connection". Gold level customers don't get any more speed or priority out of the Live network than Silver users. Now if you're talking about playing games online then you'll have to upgrade to a Gold account to get that ability. The Silver account only has the basics: profile, avatar, friends list, and access to the marketplace. Gold includes the ability to play multiplayer games online, skill-level matching (so a noob player doesn't end up playing against some godlike player their first time out), and streaming of Netflix. 3. If you already have a wireless router on your network then the 360 can connect to that provided you have the 360 wireless adapter or have hooked the 360 to a wireless bridge. It can handle both WEP and WPA-PSK encryption if you have secured your router, so you don't have to worry about compromising the security level of your wireless just to be able to hook up a game console.
YES! So much better than a Wii. There are more PC style games on the 360, or better put, more games that a PC gamer would like.
But all the games that a PC gamer would like come out on the PC and play better with a mouse and keyboard :-p
Agreed, although I won't get into the debate of mouse and keyboard vs. controller with pros and cons and who knows what, but when it comes to having perfect control if what's on-screen, a mouse and keyboard will always win. I hate having to use both my thumbs to control the camera and control where I'm going. Honestly, the "best" games on the 360 aren't that great, and most get ported anyway if you have a need for them. The PC satiates my PC gaming needs, I don't need to spend my money on something that'll give me a sub-par experience just because of some exclusives.
Agreed, although I won't get into the debate of mouse and keyboard vs. controller with pros and cons and who knows what, but when it comes to having perfect control if what's on-screen, a mouse and keyboard will always win. I hate having to use both my thumbs to control the camera and control where I'm going. Honestly, the "best" games on the 360 aren't that great, and most get ported anyway if you have a need for them. The PC satiates my PC gaming needs, I don't need to spend my money on something that'll give me a sub-par experience just because of some exclusives.
I don't get this feeling at all, even though I play both PC and console games quite a bit. The control I have with a controller is certainly less precise, but in most console games it doesn't make that much of a difference as long as the game is adapted well. I find Gears of War on the 360 to be just as enjoyable as Half Life on the PC, without feeling handicapped at all either way. I think it's just a matter of being used to the control scheme, unless your tastes are just inherently against the style of most console games.
I think it's just a matter of being used to the control scheme
Cross-platform FPSs are almost always gimped on both sides of the equation. An analog stick simply cannot offer the level of control that a mouse does for a first-person perspective game. As a result, all console FPSs tend to be designed in certain ways, minimizing many of the factors that I enjoy most in FPSs. Tribes 2 or Natural Selection could never have been made for the console or, if they had, would be unrecognizable from what they are on the PC today.
Console first-person games can be good, don't get me wrong. But by nature and design, they must be good in different ways from the way PC first-person games can be. They have to minimize the precision elements of aiming and simply the control set to a high degree.
Also, remember it's not just the mouse, it's also the keyboard. A keyboard has a lot of buttons on it. With a game like Quake or Half-Life you can get away with just the buttons on a 360 controller. But most of the really amazing PC fpses require a lot of buttons.
Take Counter-Strike for example. Think about the buy menus. Sure, you can just use menus on a console, but that's a lot slower. Most PC CS players will use keybindings. Before the menus were changed in more recent versions I remember I would do b43b07b04,,,,.... That bought a p90, an HE grenade, armor and helmet, and loaded up on ammo for p90 and pistol. It also did it very very quickly. Imagine how long it would take if I actually used the mouse or a gamepad to select all those items from a menu. In order to compensate, console counter-strike would need very long buy-times, and the entire pace of the game would be slowed down.
Now think about natural selection. NS puts most of its commands in a menu. Given that, most good players still bind every single one of those menu options to a key on the keyboard. It takes a lot less time to put one button on the keyboard to start gestating into a gorge than it takes to go through the menu with the mouse. That fraction of a second of saved time can make a big difference in the game. If NS were on a console, you would have no choice but to use a slow menu.
In addition, NS also has the RTS elements of the commander. We all know that RTSes just don't work on consoles. If there's one thing that definitely needs a mouse and keyboard, it's a traditional RTS.
It's not just FPSes and RTSes though. Look at something like Civilization. For the consoles they put out Civilization Revolution. It's kinda fun, but it is an incredibly simplified version of Civ. Civ IV is only on the PC, because without a mouse and keyboard, a user interface that is so complex just wouldn't be functional.
By necessity of the user interface, console games must be simple. That's not to say there aren't plenty of great games on consoles. But if you look at a genre like FPS, even the most basic controls are already so complex that you pretty much use up the entire gamepad. That doesn't leave a lot of flexibility to add a lot of stuff to the game when you've already used two sticks and 8 buttons just for the basic controls.
Comments
Coolers - and I forgot about the power source part, I always do for some weird reason - do actually work. It helps push the air through better, getting hot air out and fresh air in. YES this is not a good thing that you have to get it seperately in order to make it work better, it is a bad thing on Microsoft's part, but.. it's simply helpful.
2)Not as far as I know.
3)Probably, but I can't tell you for sure. Worked fine for me.
A breakdown on of the xbox (even microsoft doesn't pretend that you should buy the elite)
Seriously, just buy the cheapest HDMI cable available at Radio Shack. They're all the same.
The 120 GB HD alone costs $160, also a rip-off.
Oh, and for everyone just learning about this now, I think the model was a total flop.
1. The 360 has an ethernet port built in on the back. If you can't or don't want to hook it up through a wired connection, you can either drop $100 on a brand new 360 wireless adapter (which hooks up through a USB port on the back of the 360 and can be had for cheaper on most online retailers) or hook your 360 up to a separate wireless bridge.
2. That depends on what you mean by "good xbox live connection". Gold level customers don't get any more speed or priority out of the Live network than Silver users. Now if you're talking about playing games online then you'll have to upgrade to a Gold account to get that ability. The Silver account only has the basics: profile, avatar, friends list, and access to the marketplace. Gold includes the ability to play multiplayer games online, skill-level matching (so a noob player doesn't end up playing against some godlike player their first time out), and streaming of Netflix.
3. If you already have a wireless router on your network then the 360 can connect to that provided you have the 360 wireless adapter or have hooked the 360 to a wireless bridge. It can handle both WEP and WPA-PSK encryption if you have secured your router, so you don't have to worry about compromising the security level of your wireless just to be able to hook up a game console.
Console first-person games can be good, don't get me wrong. But by nature and design, they must be good in different ways from the way PC first-person games can be. They have to minimize the precision elements of aiming and simply the control set to a high degree.
Take Counter-Strike for example. Think about the buy menus. Sure, you can just use menus on a console, but that's a lot slower. Most PC CS players will use keybindings. Before the menus were changed in more recent versions I remember I would do b43b07b04,,,,.... That bought a p90, an HE grenade, armor and helmet, and loaded up on ammo for p90 and pistol. It also did it very very quickly. Imagine how long it would take if I actually used the mouse or a gamepad to select all those items from a menu. In order to compensate, console counter-strike would need very long buy-times, and the entire pace of the game would be slowed down.
Now think about natural selection. NS puts most of its commands in a menu. Given that, most good players still bind every single one of those menu options to a key on the keyboard. It takes a lot less time to put one button on the keyboard to start gestating into a gorge than it takes to go through the menu with the mouse. That fraction of a second of saved time can make a big difference in the game. If NS were on a console, you would have no choice but to use a slow menu.
In addition, NS also has the RTS elements of the commander. We all know that RTSes just don't work on consoles. If there's one thing that definitely needs a mouse and keyboard, it's a traditional RTS.
It's not just FPSes and RTSes though. Look at something like Civilization. For the consoles they put out Civilization Revolution. It's kinda fun, but it is an incredibly simplified version of Civ. Civ IV is only on the PC, because without a mouse and keyboard, a user interface that is so complex just wouldn't be functional.
By necessity of the user interface, console games must be simple. That's not to say there aren't plenty of great games on consoles. But if you look at a genre like FPS, even the most basic controls are already so complex that you pretty much use up the entire gamepad. That doesn't leave a lot of flexibility to add a lot of stuff to the game when you've already used two sticks and 8 buttons just for the basic controls.