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4. "Always On" Xbox Live

Although most of us see Google and Yahoo as the dominant players in network services (who really uses MSN or Mappoint?), Microsoft's strength in this area of computing cannot be ignored. With the Xbox 360, Microsoft has taken their strengths from the non-gaming division of the company to build an excellent online community. Critical to this element is the "Always On" capability of Xbox Live.

With the integrated Friends List, I can easily see if any of my friends happen to be playing online and join them, or do a voice chat. Since the voice chat is integrated into the network, it doesn't matter if my friend and I are playing the same game are not. Certainly, there are flaws to the system such as poor organization of the Friends List when it gets too large, and no good conference call options, but it's still something that Microsoft has done better than any of its competitors. On the PC, a lot of us with traditional IM clients end up going off-line while we're playing games to prevent the messaging client from bringing us back to the desktop, and even if you're running X-Fire, only a certain subset of games are supported. There's only one online gaming service that covers all the games of an entire platform and that's Xbox Live. It's just too bad Microsoft couldn't offer an hour or two of free online-gaming a month for Xbox Silver owners…

5. WMA/MP3 playback with Online Metadata

Although the original Xbox allowed you to rip WMA files to your CD too, the Xbox 360's always-on connection means that you get the same metadata support as Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 or Windows Media Player 10. Simply put, for the vast majority of music CDs including many esoteric "audiophile label" and "independent label" discs, the Xbox 360 will be able to provide track and artist information. Additionally, the Xbox 360 is one of the few consumer electronics devices capable of handling WMA Lossless playback. Although CD-TEXT support would have been a useful addition, the online database remains a nice feature should you choose to use your Xbox 360 as a media server or prefer to take advantage of the custom soundtrack feature. Although this article is focused on the strengths of the Xbox 360, I should mention that the system won't allow you to configure your WMA bitrate and that it re-encodes stereo music into Dolby Digital.

6. High-Definition Media Center Edition Extender

Windows Media Center Edition 2005 is proof that Microsoft can get user interfaces right. It's visually appealing, highly intuitive, and allows both novice users and expert users to get the most from the interface. Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 even outperforms Apple's Front Row competitor in terms of having an interface that "just works." The Xbox 360 allows owners of MCE2005 systems to use the Xbox 360 on a second TV by streaming the video over the network. While you can't play DVDs over the network, you can play recorded and live TV. This means that someone with a MCE2005 and several HD tuners could watch/record several different shows on different televisions, all in high-definition.

The original Xbox had Linux-based Media Center software and the PlayStation 2 had software like the QCast Tuner. Nonetheless, the Xbox 360 works substantially better than both of those two solutions when dealing with recorded television, music, and pictures. Although, the lack of MPEG-4 support (meaning H.264, Divx, Xvid, etc.) limits the overall versatility of the system, the Xbox 360 still offers a better solution than any other machine at the moment. Unfortunately, unless Sony makes MPEG-4 support a feature of the PS3, we are unlikely to see MPEG-4 AVI support in the Xbox 360.