Recieved and installed Vista this morning. I'll try to have something fairly in-depth after I've played around with everything.

I UN-installed it last night and went back to XP. I used it for a month and saw a few interesting plus's but most of it is bloatware. From a security standpoint they just moved file locations around to try and fool the malware/virus.

Can you tell Im not impressed

You expected otherwise?

<--- posting from OS X

Ikaruga in 1080p would look amazing, but it would HAVE to be played horozontally.

Hmmmm.... did everyone know that some Marketplace points expire? I was browsing my billing info at Microsoft's Billing Page and noticed I had 140 expire a few months back. That's weak.

Apparently store bought points don't expire, but any that are part of a promotion do, 30 days. It would be nice if that was made clear somewhere, like oh, when you put the code in.

Looks like it was points from the Summer Arcade promotion they gave away with the Papa John's Pizza. Oh well. Just thought I would share.

I have a habit of never redeeming points until the moment I want to redeem them.

Things like this is one of the reasons.

Well, at least the normal points don't expire....as I have 7900 MS points and nothing I really want.

Why not download some movies or tv shows?

Yeah, my balance was up that high and it was getting to me, so I finally caved and got Lumines over the weekend due to the special pricing.

I'm a huge puzzle fan, but I cannot for the life of me get the hang of this game. So far it was a huge waste of points.

I also wanted to bring up the expired points thing because I know there were a few people that got in on the Discovery Channel's Future Weapons promo 400 pt. giveaway. That was about a month ago, so if you haven't spent them, check your accounts!

Heh.. I only have 700 points in my account. Though I still refuse to by Lumines. I did download the free skin in case they ever reduce the pricing or do something else and I get it.

No interest since I'm a Blockbuster.com subscriber and I have HD-DVD and PS3. The movies are still over-priced to me.

I may just get some games...as some I liked, but not enough to buy. We'll see.

I didn't know you could download the content without actually having the game, so I guess I'll do the same thing.

im thinking about buying lumines for 360 after getting it for my PSP last week

Yeah. You can download the stuff without having the game, you just can't do anything with it. For instance, I downloaded the free stuff for Ridge Racer 6 in case I ever play the game. I do that with free stuff as usually it doesn't take up a lot of space and if it is a limited time thing, I want to get it before I can't any more.

I'm having a small problem with 360 custom music playing capability and was wondering
if anyone else has experienced this or knows of any fix.

When playing custom tracks in any type of "all" format (album, genre, songs...), if I
return to the Xbox 360's dashboard the music defaults to playing only the track that
was loaded at the time over and over again.

thats because you are only choosing one track


you have to hit Y to play the entire album, then just skip tracks as you see fit

I'm not choosing one track, I'm choosing "play all". It defaults to what you're
mentioning when it returns to the dash. Without any tinkering with the music
feature it forgets, if you will, that I selected "play all" upon the return. Is there
a setting that will stop this?

Edited to add; I may have worded my explanation a little off.
This happens when returning to the dash from a game, not the music player
(which would make it look like I've only selected one track). The music plays
fine in game, it just sticks on the above.

I just bought an Xbox Live Gold Pack on clearance at Target, for 50% off but it says that the subscription card must be redeemed before 6/30/07.

Does that mean that if I plug the code in today, it will only be good until 6/30/07.... or does that mean that I just have to type the code in before that date and it will last the full 12months?

I called the worthless help line and the guy couldn't understand what I was asking and just told me to go to the web site (which didn't help).

Just enter the code on or before that date and you should be set for the full 12 months beginning* at that time.

*EDIT: If you currently have an active XBL account, the new 12 months would be added to the back end of your current sub.

I think I can help. Your card is worthless now. Why don't you just send me the code and we'll call it even!

Chris

Hehe. Thanks Xbox69.

Btw, is anyone interested in trading something for a copy of Bankshot Billiards? I've already got it, so I'm looking to trade for basically any other arcade game.

Zodo, YGM

I'll have a Contra code in a couple of months.

Yeah, I should be getting Contra in a few months too, from the Old Spice deal. I hear the co-op is pretty much broken though. Did they ever actually fix the bugs?

I don't know, I don't really have any interest in it. I'll probably offer it up here.