You can plug the Play&Charge up to any USB outlet. I have mine plugged into my desktop, and it charges way faster than it does via the 360. I'd say a full charge would probably take less than 2 hours, but I've never fully depleted my battery.

What are some good rechargeable batteries/charger?

The only thing I don't use rechargeables for regularly anymore is my camera. I need to get a reconditioner or something because my cells are just too weak to power it properly. However, they work wonderfully in my 360 and Wii controllers and I can't imagine paying more for that.

I tried to use my AA rechargeables I use with my Wii on my 360, and the 360 just ate through them. Maybe 4 hours or so of play.

Weird, I have Energizer AA 2500 mAH rechargeables, they actually last longer in the 360 controller than the Wii-mote, which always struck me as a little odd. Usually about 12 hours on the Wii-mote and about 20 on the 360.

I've been using the Energizer AA 2500s as I just mentioned, with a 15 minute recharger.. got a bundle of Charger + 4 batteries for about $20 a while back.

Thanks. Where's the best place to get them? B&M, online?

I use the rechargable batteries for my Wii and 360. Works great. Just buy a couple of extra so you can swap out when the first set runs dry.

These are the ones I use and they last a long time. Comes in a pack of 20 for only $20.

http://www.all-battery.com/index.asp...OD&ProdID=1350

Taking advantage of my Best Buy PRP (Product Replacement Plan) by exchanging my Pro system for an Elite today. Can't wait!

I have a couple sets of rechargeables, Panasonic and Monster (did not pay full price), and while they're definitely more economical, it's sort of a pain to keep them charged for when I need them. I buy a big pack of AA or AAA from BJ's just to have "in case" I don't want to wait for the rechargeables to charge. I can see a convenience in the play and charge kit, or the rechargeable add ons, but they're probably more than I would want to pay for a single-purpose device.
I'm trying to decide if the elite's 100GB more space is worth the additional 100$.

I just can't decide if I want to buy the Elite and risk losing full access to my 40+ XBLA games. This is really driving me nuts, and I don't want to buy a new system for sure until I know I can do this.

Thinking of calling today, and raising a bit of a fuss about it.

You'd still be able to play them, you'd just have to be logged into XBox Live with the name you used to purchase them. Everything purchased off Live is connected to your user name and your console serial number. So long as you are accessing it from one of them it'll work.

....So I wouldn't have full access to them.

I'm aware of that. But that's not what I paid for. My wife plays a lot of these games on her gamertag. In addition, what if my internet goes down? What if I move somewhere where DSL/cable internet aren't available? (out in the boonies, for example...it sounds silly, but my dad has this issue)

I know how the system works...we had a discussion throughout the thread about it. Simply put, there should be a way for someone like myself, who wants nothing more than to throw more money at Microsoft, to retain full playability for material purchased from XBL.

At this point, I'm leaning towards calling in once I get my Elite, and if they won't do it after 2-3 different phone calls, just returning the Elite, and selling off the 360 I currently have.

Yeah.... that'll teach them.... huh?

Not meant like that, and I'm mostly talking out of frustration anyway, although I certainly wouldn't buy the Elite. But definitely intend to try everything I can to make this work.

I shelled out the 5 for track an field and now im not sure this game is unplayable online when there is a little lag. Plus I remember how annoying this game is sometimes

I had no problems getting like $85 worth of points refunded to me when my 360 stopped reading discs, and I got it replaced via GameStop's PRP. I made a more detailed post somewhere in the last thread, I believe.

Right...but the problem is that your 360 was broken, and then replaced.

My 360 is a near-launch model, so they're not going to buy the "I returned it to the store" - especially since it's been fixed once and then returned. If mine were broken, I'd almost certainly have no trouble...but my situation may be a bit different.

Did they ask if you'd returned it via Gamestop, or did you volunteer that information? I'm thinking if I just tell them it stopped reading discs, and I bought an Elite to upgrade instead of sending it in, that MIGHT work.

The other issue with HDMI vs Component is the inputs your TV may have. Very often, with budget LCD hdtv's, the component inputs are not very good where as HDMI inputs have been shown to offer "solid" input across most LCD hdtvs. In other words, if you bought a cheaper LCD TV, they very likely skimped on the analog processing, so you may see a more significant increase when using HDMI then someone with a higher quality set.

I informed them up-front that I had returned it at GameStop, and that now my wife couldn't play the games on her gamertag.

Does Gamestop buy broken 360s? I know they used to purchase broken PS2s and Gamecubes, as I had one of each and got $20-30 out of them. If that's the case...I'm golden.

I traded in a broken xbox back in the day and they gave me $87 bucks.

BestBuy.com does now list an xbox 360 with top spin 2 bundled for $349.99, in-store only coming in a few days. I think I saw it in their "current ad specials" section.

Finally!

I finally figured out why my spare external 80GB USB harddrive wasn't being recognized by the 360. It turns out that there was a factory-installed funky boot record/partition that prevented the 360 from seeing it. Fired up Maxtor's MaxBlast, wiped out the drive, created one large partition.... bingo!

If anyone else is having difficulty with their drives, it may be the same thing. (remember to use Maxtor's MaxBlast for drives larger than 32GB... and the drive needs to be formatted FAT32).

I can finally replace my 2GB thumbdrive with this 80GB drive (may end up buying a larger one), load up all of my music, photos, and converted videos for local playback from the 360 without the need to stream from a desktop computer.

Note: This does NOT replace the 20GB 360 drive... you can't store game saves or downloaded content to the external USB drive. It is treated as a "portable device".

Saw it at BB today. The premiums had stickers with a pic of the game stating it was packed inside.