I bought my first 360 2 weeks ago, so i can anwser some of this:

You have different zones you can select that basically matches player to player for co-op gaming, i chose recreation its like the part time gamer for fun zone, you can choose others like pro where you get people like neXus calling everyone noobs, or underground which as far i understand you can just do what you like, team kill and all the rest of it.

But by all means you dont need to co-op, ive had loads of invites i just turn them down and solo-play, i mean damn i played wow since the start but spent most of my time soloing so nothing will change now

As for games, ive not researched into it fully but 360 seems A1 for racing games, lots of big titles here and coming out in the future afaik. Footy and golf just dont interest me, sounds to much like hard work, exactly why i choose to play a console over going out and playing footy or golf lol.

The 360 itself is quite loud, i run the pc next to it and it drowns the sound of the pc when i have both of them running together.

Wii is aimed at group play and family games, 360 seems more aimed at the elitists, the noobs, the solo players and sometimes the co-op 2-4 man groups

Cheers, you guys know any good links, like a crash course in 360/ps3 terms?

The 36 does look good but I dunno, lots of little things Im not sure about. Is it the dvd thats noisy or the fans? Can you swap stuff out?

360 now has hdmi too

another reason to choose it over a ps3

It wont do it over Component/Scart

Is that right ? bugger. I use component and Ive never noticed, I guess it must be my TV doing the upscaling then !

hmm, perhaps Ill have to upgrade to an Elite now then

Also, how does the live subscription thing work? Am I right in thinking theres a free version of it?

There are 2 levels of Live. Silver gives you a friends list, ability to download games, demos, vids, etc and ability to chat with friends, send messages, etc. Gold, does all that and allows you to play online. You have to pay for the gold if you wanna play with friends over Live.

Will it just plug straight into my tft or will I need a cable?

Depends what connections it has, but chances are its only got either DVI or VGA, in which case youll want to buy the Xbox 360 VGA cable as well as the console, unless you get the elite, then you could use the HDMI cable and buy an HDMI -> DVI adapter.

That watchdog vid is 8 months old, since then MS have upped the warranty up to 3 years for the ring of death and have also updated newer xbox 360s with a better heatsink to stop the problem cropping up and have added other extras such as HDMI ports to the consoles.