MS is screwing thier consumers AGAIN

[Rex]

Xbox Live's next big update is about to come out. It will include Twitter, Facebook, and Last.fm, but what is sneaking past many people is that the patch will disable and forbid the 360 from recognizing ANY THIRD PARTY MEMORY STORAGE.

Hands-on: Social networking on Xbox 360

Most, if not all, of you will not be affected by this. But I use my 360 primarily for movies. I rarely have time to play games at all and only even own Fable2 and Vegas2.

So let me break this down into what it means:

-Everyone who's hacked their drive to install a bigger one... It won't work. Gotta buy a new one if you threw the old one out.

-A Pre-owned Xbox 360 Memory Card 512MB at gamestop will set you back $24.99. A New 4GIG card from MAX only costs $49.99. Phew, talk about a difference . Keep in mind that these 3rd party cards are still for sale and people are still buying.

-My biggest concern: Will generic USB thumbdrives continue to work? If not then I have no more use for my Xbox . I run Linux on the desktop and can't share over the network with the Xbox's "WMP Only" method of sharing.

If things stop working then I guess the 360's going on CL. A PS3 will actually do everything I want AND play Blueray Discs. I'm surprised that MS is doing something this blatantly menacing to their consumers.

[cmurphy84]

You should have gotten a PS3. They fully warranty/support upgrading your own hard drive and installing Ubuntu. Plus, I don't have to pay just to play online.

[cozye]

I've been reading some reviews lately on blue ray players. many are suggesting that the ps3 actually is the best choice because it is a high quality blue ray player that loads quickly, not to mention all the other things it can do.

recently I've been doing a lot of video with my new HD video camera. It's really sweet that the ps3 has just about every codec imaginable and can play avchd files, .mov files, aic (apple intermediate codec), mpg2, 4 etc.. on and on, straight off any USB Storage device or memory card. I can plug in a USB hard drive and play moves right off it and they are instantly recognized, thumb drive, SD card, CD, DVD, BRD, etc..

I also upgraded the hard drive a long time ago in the unit to a 7200rpm. It was litterally plug and play. Took the old one out, slapped the new one in, it reloaded the OS from the flash automatically and downloaded the updates without any effort.

I've gained a whole new respect for the platform for doing a lot of stuff just beyond games. ANd they are cheap enough now to compete with any decent blue ray only player.

[Tragic]

I hate MS. I feel for ya, though this really doesn't surprise me at all.

[Speagle]

The only way MS will strive to please it's customers is if someone steps up as a true competitor. MS is such an overwhelming force in the field that they think they can do whatever they want. They may be right. Apple sure is in no position to really threaten them, hell their shit is locked down tighter than MS's anyway.

[Rex]

The only way MS will strive to please it's customers is if someone steps up as a true competitor. MS is such an overwhelming force in the field that they think they can do whatever they want. They may be right. Apple sure is in no position to really threaten them, hell their shit is locked down tighter than MS's anyway.

Sony's a great competitor, especially in the hand-held field. And the ps3 is looking better and better.

[Speagle]

Yeah MS apparently doesn't put much resources into hand held tech, a big mistake imo. My ps3 makes a wonderful bluray player, but short of a few demos I have never done any gaming on it. My 360 is just better for games I think, especially online games.

[cmurphy84]

I've been reading some reviews lately on blue ray players. many are suggesting that the ps3 actually is the best choice because it is a high quality blue ray player that loads quickly, not to mention all the other things it can do.

That was one of my determining factors. Just after Blu-Ray won the media war, Walmart had a special going where you got $100 instant rebate on any Blu-ray player. It included the PS3 (which was already on sale $75 off.) I bought one for under $300, then got a couple games, an extra controller, and some miscellaneous junk. All for MSRP of just the console.

[cozye]

Apple sure is in no position to really threaten them, hell their shit is locked down tighter than MS's anyway.

Not true anymore. I've worked in IT for 15 years, always a big PC guy, hated microsoft, love linux, etc... I just recently converted to Mac at home. Apple has made a lot of progress and made some really smart moves moving their platform over intel based, building OS X on top of BSD. It is a lot more open now. Anyone can write software for it, and since it runs on a BSD kernel, there are a lot of open source programs out there that will compile and run on it. Not to mention the boatload of peripherals that will now work since its an Intel platform. Then you have things like bootcamp and vmware fusion that allow you to run windows if you choose too, or for that 1 application that would normally keep you from switching.

Then if you take into account how many customers have become addicted to their iphones and may switch to mac based on their experience with the iphone.

I've see a big surge in MAC usage as compared to PC. Everytime i go into the apple store, its packed with people looking at macbooks, etc.. There always seems to be a crowd around the mac's at best buy too.

I'm a convert after just one month of having one.

[Speagle]

Not true anymore. I've worked in IT for 15 years, always a big PC guy, hated microsoft, love linux, etc... I just recently converted to Mac at home. Apple has made a lot of progress and made some really smart moves moving their platform over intel based, building OS X on top of BSD. It is a lot more open now. Anyone can write software for it, and since it runs on a BSD kernel, there are a lot of open source programs out there that will compile and run on it. Not to mention the boatload of peripherals that will now work since its an Intel platform. Then you have things like bootcamp and vmware fusion that allow you to run windows if you choose too, or for that 1 application that would normally keep you from switching.

Then if you take into account how many customers have become addicted to their iphones and may switch to mac based on their experience with the iphone.

I've see a big surge in MAC usage as compared to PC. Everytime i go into the apple store, its packed with people looking at macbooks, etc.. There always seems to be a crowd around the mac's at best buy too.

I'm a convert after just one month of having one.

You didn't by chance have to sync that post through itunes did you. I used to do alot of pc gaming so obviously I didn't spend alot of time on macs. Now that pc gaming is on it's way out i guess microsoft won't have that over apple anymore. I know lots of people who own iphones and yes I used to want one, but you'd have to hack an iphone to do the things my android phone does right out of the box. That's what apple does, they make a great device and then make sure you can't do half the shit it's capable of. Apple isn't even in the same league as microsoft. If you called 100 people at random I wonder how many of them would say they own a mac or a pc, it wouldn't even be close.