and buy a 360, but I have a few questions I'm hoping you guys could help me with.

1st: The 360 would be in a semi-public space, is there a way to keep other people out of my marketplace account but still let them play games? 

2nd: Is the 360 compatable with my old xbox wireless adapter? or should I just run a wire to it?

3rd: I know what retail games I want to get, what are some good XBLA games?  I'm interested in Wik: Fable of Souls, Bomberman Live, Geometry Wars, Puzzle Quest, and Carcassonne.  What are some other good ones.

 Thanks

1) Fairly certain you can implment a controller based password for each live account. Just remember what the hell it is. Worth noting if you use a Credit Card to buy things on the marketplace, it'll saved permantely and if someone else's accesses your account they buy things willy nilly.

2) I've been told it does actually work, even if it's technically not suppose to.

3) Doom and Geometry Wars were the only ones I got. I thought they were both worth it. Castlevania is popular. 

I'm pretty sure 360 has parental controls. The interesting thing about them is that they only work as parental controls if the parents are the one in control of them. otherwise they're just generic controls.

Sweetness.

To answer your questions:

1. You can have your profile ask for a password - it saves the passwords by default, but just uncheck it in your privacy settings. You can also set up user logins as well.

2. I'd google that question. For me, wired is the ONLY way to go, because it's much, much more stable than wifi. Wifi is good with my Wii, though.

3. Carcassone totally rocks! I was playing it for a long, long time. Another sweet Live title is Texas Holdem' and this one game that has several minigames, including chess and backgammon.

And as far as LIVE, go on eBay and buy a 12-month LIVE card for $30 shipped. There's no need to pay $50 or higher for it. I have never, ever paid more than $30 shipped in the 4 years I've been on LIVE - and they will e-mail you the code within a few minutes after payment!

I don't understand why people need to ask for advice regarding XBLA games. Find out for yourself, download the free trial versions of like 50 games and then buy the ones you like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_Live_Arcade_games_by_date
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_Live_Arcade_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_Live_Arcade_games#Upcoming_releases

Sinha - not everyone has time to download the 50-ish good to great XBLA games before making up your mind.

As for XBLA games - Try out Geometry Wars, Outpot Kaloki X, Doom, Undertow, Castlevainia: SOTN, Catan, Puzzle Fighter HD, Switchball, and Arkadian Warriors - Outside of the ones you mentioned, these are great too.

I was exaggerating with 50, but he could download 10-20.

I just wouldn't trust some strangers on an internet forum to have similar tastes as me. And one of the best things about XBLA is the free trial versions.

I agree with Sinha. Try the demo first. It's the thing that most turns me off of the Wii's VC.

As for 'not having time to try them', what's the rush? Impulse buy? MUST.... BUY... NOW....

At the very least, if you think one game sounds interesting, at least download that one before you pay for it. Who knows - you may have fond memories of it and then realize it's crap now. cough double dragon cough...

I have about 15-20 Arcade games.  Worms is another good one if that hasn't been mentioned yet.

Lots of the arcade titles are excellent. Switchball is another good one. There is a robot one that is exceptional (I forget the name).