I will start off by saying I absolutley love my xbox 360. I did not own the orignial xbox, I was an owner of a playstation 2, and also the originial playstation. I was given my xbox 360 as a christmas gift four years ago now. I fell in love with it imediatley.
The graphics where absolutley amazing. I purchased a xbox live gold membership so I could play online with my friends. This also was a fantastic purchase. Yes, you have to pay to play. However, the generally lag free experience is smooth and seemless. If your buying a 360 now you getting even more than I started out with. The library of games has truly grown, with blockbusters in every genre. Also, the list of features and updates to the 360 dashboard and xbox live has been fairly substatial with more cool features to come, such as facebook, twitter, and last.fm
My orginial 360 did suffer the fatal red ring of death. I sent it out for repair under warranty and it was fully replaced. I have had my second 360 for at least three years now or more and have not had any problems with it. I highly reccomend that you hook this up to a hdtv. I played on a standard television until I was able to purchase and hdtv recently, it was well worth my purchase. games looking amazing now