Here is the xbox.com's explaination of the differences,
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/compare101.htm
There use to be a bigger price difference between the two, but toward the end of last year Sony released the PS3 slim and dropped the price considerably.
I bought the 360 arcade, and later bought a refurbished 20GB HD for $20 (and the 20GBs has always been far more than adequate for me, even with all the DLC I have picked up). Honestly, it is nice to have a hard drive, just so you can download trailers and demos. The arcade comes with 512mb of space for game saves built in, which isn't all that much. You can, however, buy extra memory cards a lot cheaper than a hard drive. If the model between the Elite and the 360 still existed, I'd recommend that, but it appears they've done away with it on the last price drop.
I still think an Xbox 360 arcade for $199.99 (or one hundred and twenty quid), is quite a deal. Looks like the amazon market place at amazon.co.uk has a 20GB HD for £30, which means it would cost you about £150 minimum if you felt you needed an HD (compared to £200 for an Elite with a 120GB drive). Also keep in mind if you want to play online, you have to dish out another £32.99 (amazon's price) for a 12 month Xbox Live Gold Membership (I got 13 months from some guy on ebay for $37 USD, which as you know, is considerably cheaper than £32. I am sure you could find a similar deal and save yourself a bit). It sucks you have to pay money to play online with the 360, but honestly, their online play absolutely kicks the ass of both Wii and PS3 (I've also heard rumors that PS3 is going to start charging for premium online features so they can make them better, might not be true though).
Johnny Ringo said:
EyeShotFirst said:
You can customize a PS3 as much as you can a computer
Since when?
Since never. Hyperbole obviously. A computer holds many more options for a customization, and while the PS3's customization abilities are nifty (it can run Linux, right?) it is still pretty limited. The 360 has no customization ability at all, beyond changing themes. If someone was wanting to use the thing to surf the web, or to run homebrew, the 360 would most certainly NOT be the way to go.