Just like in the previous generation, utilisation of things like Xbox Live and the Hard Drive will be up to the game designers, game developers have also been informed that some scenarios will include a disconnected hard drive.

Yes, but only video downloaded from the Xbox Live Marketplace or preloaded on the Xbox, not your own videos.

We want to expand the Xbox experience to different audiences. By offering choice to consumers we allow consumers the flexibility to enter the immersive, high definition world of Xbox 360 gaming and build toward the complete Xbox 360 entertainment experience.

The hard drive for the Xbox 360 is removable so can be used on another person's Xbox 360 however it is not as small or as portable as a memory card which can be kept on a key chain. The Memory card slots into one of the two Memory Card slots on the front of the console.

Yes. Game designers will have all kinds of innovative ideas that the hard drive will be used for. Use of the hard drive is not just limited to game scenarios. Like the original Xbox you will be able to do things like rip and store music, plus Xbox Live scenarios and downloadable content.

The Xbox 360 hard drive is a 2.5" hard drive, similar to those found in notebooks. The hard drive that you buy for your PC are 3.5". Considering that notebook parts are always more expensive than desktop PC components, it is reasonable that the Xbox 360 hard drive costs more than a desktop PC hard drive of the same size.

To upgrade your hard drive you will need a xbox mod chip installed and a copy of the EvoX cd or dvd. It has an hard drive rebuild option for upgraded large hard drives. When its has finished installing reboot and that all you need to do.

In a word, NO. The xbox has 4 x 16MB chips by default (64MB) they all share address pins i.e pin 1 on 1 chip is electrically the same point as pin 1 on the other 3 chips. The xbox has 4 positions and ONLY 4 positions free in which you can install extra memory chips. There are 2 free positions on the top side of the motherboard and 2 free on the underneath side.

Yes. The XNA Framework runtime environment for Xbox 360 requires that a physical hard drive be present on your Xbox 360 retail console.

In a special chat held after the Xbox 360 price announcement, J Allard said: We think game designers have all kinds of innovative ideas that the hard drive will be used for. Use of the hard drive is not limited to game scenarios. Like Xbox 1 you will be able to do things like rip and store music and don't forget about live scenarios and all the downloadable content.

No. You don't need to. The Xbox hard drive has separate partitions for cache, music etc & there is no need to defragment the drive ever, period.

If Linux is already installed, you'll have to attach one of the hard drives to the DVD drive cable and basically perform a regular Linux hard drive upgrade. See the HOWTO's for more info. If you have not installed Linux yet, you'll have to consider why you need that software - you will not be able to run XBox games with an upgraded hard drive, so you're probably better off doing a hardware mod and installing Linux on the new hard drive while it's still empty. Under the right circumstances, yes.

The Xbox 360 it is not a personal computer in the sense of PC as a productivity tool. However, its hardware capabilities and technical specifications make the Xbox 360 more powerful than any desktop computer available on the market at this time.

Yes. The Xbox has a built-in 8GB HDD that can be used for but not limited to storing game demos, ripped CD's, extra characters/maps/weapons in games. The hard drive is not be used as the installation destination of a game, like it is on the PC, rather it is used as a "scratch pad" to avoid DVD seek delays.

Although this is pretty Black & White, there has been some recent developments that have cast a nice Grey area over this question. To keep things simple...

Note: Some games do not support transferring saves using a memory card, for example Knights of the Old Republic does not support save transfer even with a large enough memory units.

Yes and you'll have full menu support too. Just rip the DVD movie to your hard drive using DVD Decryptor, then ftp the ISO file to your f:\video or g:\video directory on your Xbox. Once copied over, just play it with XBMC. Or just use the dvd2xbox application on your Xbox and make sure you're ripping in ISO mode. "ISO mode" is for movies and "normal mode" is for games.

You won't need a hard drive to enjoy all the benefits of Xbox Live Silver and Gold with the Core System, but you will at least need a Memory Unit (MU) in order to save your Gamer Profile. If you plan on downloading a lot of content (vehicles, maps, game trailers, demos, etc) you'll want to get a hard drive.