As I mentioned in my previous blog I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the NXE preview program's third wave of participants. After having the NXE at my disposale I wil touch on a few of the thins I did like, didn't like and mention the things I havn't been able to use yet.

Pros

 - Install feature is fairly quick (5-8 minutes for a 5GB install), definetly improves loading times and silences the DVD drive! (This is probably my favorite feature so far).

- Avaters are slick and easy to make and offer a good amount of custimization, hopefully MS can incorporate more customization and continuously add new features to the avatar system with future updates.

-Guide button is fantastic, you can do absolutly anything throuh your guide button and never have to use the dashboard interface if you don't want to.

-Dashboard and guide load times seem alot quicker and smotther.

Cons

- Dashboard seems a little tricky to maneuver at least for now until I get a better understanding of where everything is. To summarize, looks nice but seems to have a steep learning curve.

- Themes are horrible, the semi spherecauses huge problems for the thems and cuts off most of the imae leaving only the top of the image viewable. Hopefully previous themes will be edited or new themes will solve this problem.

- To many sound effects, I think they added them to make the console more appealing to casual users, but is very unecessary.

Features I havn't used

-NETFLIX, unfortunatley since I live in Canada there is no Netflix option for me to test out.

- Parties, since no one else I know is in the preview I have been unable to test out the new party system, however I do have high hopes for the feature.

Feel free to ask any other questions about the NXE (if you have any) I will try to answer them to the best of my knowledge!