"I have not seen a hardware/software system as well thought out as the Xbox 360 for a decade or more."
John C. Dvorak - PC Magazine
He seems to like the new xbox360. Read the whole article
Xbox 360 to the Rescue
He is dead right with this :
"The commercial failure of the Media Center PC and other initiatives is generally because of their increasing complexity. Any hardware or software product will, over time, incorporate new features rather than improve old features. Inevitably, the learning curve becomes too steep for new users. Thus, the product is usable only by longtime users.
This is happening with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and with some smartphones. It has also happened with many "hard-core" video games. The term hard-core reveals their market: people who have played the earlier versions to an extreme.
The temptation to add more and more features to a product—"creeping featurism"—seems irresistible. Adding this and that is a lot easier than fixing complicated or obscure features. This is the checklist approach to development: Once a feature is added and checked off the list, it is time to move to the next. It doesn't matter that the feature is incredibly difficult to use.—Continue reading
This is a problem with clones of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. The clones have all the features on the checklist, but try to use them or even find them! The best Word clones should be either functionally identical to Word—keystroke for keystroke—or totally simplified. But making software easier is harder than simply adding features.
This brings me back to the Xbox 360, which has incorporated complex new features but seemingly has not overshot the user's abilities with hard-to-use features. In fact, I have not seen a hardware/software system this well thought out for a decade or more. But what's remarkable is the potential for the Xbox to open the market for the Media Center PC by becoming a middleman or coordinator."