| A note about fan/drive noise on the 360.
I think the drive (not the fan) is the major noise factor on the 360. It can sometimes spin up to pretty fast speeds and can get LOUD.
That being said, the newest upgrade to the 360 that came out this winter has allowed the option to preload a game onto the hard drive. If you do this, you still have to leave the game disc in the machine, but when you play it there will be no drive noise as it pulls the data off the HDD. This allows me to play Fallout 3 in peace.
One other new feature the 360 does is allow you to stream Netflix streamable movies through your internet connection. You do have to subscribe to Xbox Live (Usually costs 45-50 bucks for 13 months on Amazon) and have to have to be a Netflix user as well (9 bucks a month for the 1-DVD-at-your-house-at-a-time plan). My wife, who never uses the game function of the 360 LOVES this. We have watched 4 seasons of The Office in HD in just a couple weeks since signing up.
I don't think either machine you pick is gonna be a bad choice. Good luck!
DS | 
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