Re: @Simon Ward

"re: XBOX 360 - "I don't - if I anticipate playing something a lot, it goes onto the HDD". I had no idea you can do this - Halo3 and COD 5 are the most played games. I'll look into it; I am surprised because of the risk of copying (i.e borrow a game, copy it to the hard disk)."

Seems a lot of people didn't know this! I discovered it somewhat by accident because the clattering noise of the DVD drive whilst playing Fable 2 was driving me up the wall. You still need to have the original game disc in order to play, but with the HDD install option it reads the data off the hard disk rather than the DVD (duh!) - to do it, try the following steps:

- Go to "My Xbox"->"Game Library"

- Click on the game you want to transfer to HD

- Select the 'Install to Hard Drive' (or similarly worded) option

- Wait ... depending on the amount of data to transfer it'll take anything from a little while to

bloody ages. The amount of disk space taken by the game will vary, but 5-6Gb is usual.

From then on, the game should play from the hard disk until such time as you delete it - you still have fan noise to contend with, but I can live with that. The whole process is a bit of a ball-ache, but again, it's bearable.

As for the PS3, I'd be pretty pissed off if I'd paid full price for it (I didn't - it was second hand) - the range of games is, currently, pretty poor compared to the 360 although there is some promising looking stuff in the pipeline. On the other hand, compared to Xbox Live, PSN really is laughably poor. Lack of PS2 backward compatibility, at least on European machines, was a major shark-jumping incident from Sony, IMO - granted, the number of 'classic' Xbox titles playable on the 360 is limited, at least the capability is there.

So, of the three consoles I have, the PS2 gets wheeled out for the oldies that I like, the 360 is my main 'gaming' machine and no doubt the PS3 will get more usage when I've managed to dig up a few more games that appeal to me - in the meantime, it's a good enough media player.

Hope this helps.

@Simon Ward

I migrated from a PS2 to an XBOX360 - that's the perspective seen in my comments.

re: XBOX 360 - "I don't - if I anticipate playing something a lot, it goes onto the HDD". I had no idea you can do this - Halo3 and COD 5 are the most played games. I'll look into it; I am surprised because of the risk of copying (i.e borrow a game, copy it to the hard disk).

I did want to get a PS3 instead of the XBOX360 - however, most kids in my son's school have an XBOX360 and there is peer pressure because of XBOX Live. My comments on the PS3's size were based on how it seemed - the curves made me think it was bigger.

I'll get a 45nm PS3 this summer for viewing BluRay movies. The XBOX360 with Live will remain for gaming. The PS3 is the best value BluRay player out there.

My comments on Microsoft's profits and their poor performance are relative - I'd have thought Microsoft would at least be as influential as Apple were. I don't expect them to be a major manufacturer like Sony, but their "influence" should be significant and allow them access to the latest hardware I'd have thought. That said, no iMacs are Quad core and they all have underpowered graphics...