help buying an xbox

I know you lot like your video games, so you might be able to give me some advice on buying an Xbox for a medium-sized child of my acquaintance for christmas.

A couple of questions:

1. what models are there (an internet search threw up too many to choose from), and which are the best?
2. Best place to buy from?
3. will he be guaranteed to retreat into his bedroom and not emerge for the next 4 years other than to eat, wash and go to school?

(helpful answers only please - I'm not trawling through who likes what game, showing off high scores etc)

thanks

[Wideboy]

1. premium - for price
2. any big retailer like pc world, play.com used to be the cheapest but pc world offer £1 a month insurance for any accident
3. yes

[TSM]

get a PS3 slim

Originally Posted by TSM

get a PS3 slim

Good point - we're only looking at xboxes as he's got a PS3 at his dad's and:
- he'll be able to have different games on his xbox to his PS3
- games won't disappear to his dad's house and not come back

As Wideboy said Premium model is the one to go for, unless you can find an extremely good deal on the Elite model (more storage capacity). Ignore the Arcade version (no hard disk).

Game are quite good at the moment as you can pay £20 for two years cover against any sort of defect or issue ie RROD oir E73/E74 error

ask for the latest model they've got in stock to give yourself the full three years rrod cover microsoft's warranty run's by mfr date not purchase date as i found out.i'd go for the premium for the harddrive.

[Swin]

Arcade doesn't have a hard drive, but is cheap
Premium has a hard drive, but you don't get a wireless network connector
Elite also has a hard drive (I think it's larger than the premium but not sure) and has a wireless network connector. Oh, and it's black.

[edit]
At the time we bought our one, Argos was doing the best deal as we got a second controller and a couple of games for the same price that Curry's etc were selling it for.

Originally Posted by zsv650

ask for the latest model they've got in stock to give yourself the full three years rrod cover microsoft's warranty run's by mfr date not purchase date as i found out.i'd go for the premium for the harddrive.

That covers any Xbox360 regardless of purchase or manufacture date, for 3 years. When they announced this extension (specifically for rrod as you say) they actually refunded any moneys that had previously been paid by owners for repair work.

As your in london have a look at the pc world in fulham.
They are "re-opening" it and doing xbox premium and a free game or two for just over the £100 mark if i read the paper correctly.