Xbox 360

Someone I know at work wants one. That set me thinking, because he claimed that the specs were much better than the price warranted. Twenty thousand odd rupees, and you get a triple-core 3.2GHz CPU, a decent enough GPU, 512MB RAM, etc. etc. and I spent almost that amount in getting ONLY a dual core Opteron processor. Where's the mismatch?

Of course I know that consoles are not meant for general purpose computing, but the PS3 will apparently be able to run Linux as well. And all said and done, the only general purpose computing I do at home is games, browsing, playing music, watching movies; all of which modern consoles can do (after a fashion). If at all there is something consoles cannot do, one always has a cheapo PC/laptop lying around to solve the problem. Is there a need for the dual core Opterons and the 7900GTs?

I tried to verify the difference between the PCs games and the Xbox, but a lot of them are released for both platforms. With support for HDTV, consoles are not limited to low resolutions either. Since I've never seen any console in action I cannot comment on the quality, but websites assure me that the Xbox's (360, not the original one) graphics quality is as good, if not better than high end video cards'.

Availability of games? I buy my PC games from legal sources so console games would not be that much more costly either. I believe the Xbox 360 has a VGA connector so I need not buy an HDTV.

Non-standard peripherals? Aha. HDD is probably not user replaceable. Can I plug in a 250GB SATA disk instead of the measly little thing that MS provides? Probably not. Can I use my Logitech Momo racing wheel with the Xbox 360? I have no idea. Can I plug in an optical mouse and USB keyboard and play strategy games? I have no idea. Can I post to my blog? I have no idea. Consoles in earlier times were simpler, they played a specific category of games and did nothing else.

Will someone with an idea respond and let me know the facts?