Buying an Xbox 360 is nothing short of baffling. I mean, you can just go to the store and get one, but you don't know what you're getting in the box, in that your console may or may not have the new, quiet BenQ DVD drive, HDMI, a second heat sink to prevent the dreaded RRoD, etc etc etc. It's confusing to get a future-proof console, to say the least.

Add to this the news that the Falcon chipset (which replaces the CPU, not the RRoD-inducing overheating GPU, with a 65 nm chip) is going to be available imminently, and do you wait? Do you buy now? If you do buy one, how do you tell, exactly, what's in the box? Well, there's a very long-winded but extensive guide on what to expect with different lot numbers and manufacturing dates in the official Xbox forums, which is a good starting point. There's also the DVD visual guide (see link above) and the digicam heatsink check (though I found a flashlight waaaay easier), but I'll probably post a detailed how-to at some point.

In other news, the coming Dashboard update might bring a (brilliant) parental timer feature; RRoD may have choked the repair queue; and DO NOT cheat and get onto Xbox Live beta tests when you're not supposed to, or you'll get banned from Xbox Live for 7,000+ years, no joke!