The dashboard was always one of my most favorite aspects of the 360. Best console UI in my opinion.

I really like the new update, especially the "categories" section of the Zune video marketplace wih the automatic previews.

jeeze.... defensive much?!

you know people can have different opinions than yours, right!? 

as for the bolded, What? dont make me laugh. what is that even supposed to mean. are you really talking about, those only console that every model comes with a hardrive, built in wifi. the only console that has Blu-ray, thoe only console that can properly do 1080p movies, with uncompressed sound, with every sound track supported imaginable. do you mean the only console that can do 3d 1080p movies, the console with the most video, picture, and sound formats supported. the console that has had an provided us with a free online service since launch, one with a mlb.tv, hulu+, nhl center ice, vudu, etc before xbox, the console with other movie and show apps, like netflix, not to mention a web browser to view anything on the internet.

how exactly is it not 21st century ready? why do yo have to be such a fanboy all the time?

ps: i have an Atrix 4g. and never, never ever do i have adds that pop up when i start my phone, use it, or navigate it. the only time i ever have adds, are when there are tiny little add on the side of the screen, when i play the FREE apps i downloaded.

I hate the new dashboard, I will grow used to it as I had NXE which I didnt like either. My main problem is I bought my XBOX to be a gaming device, not an all in 1 wonderdevice. The system may have been like this before but it feels that it is way more in my face. Of the 7 tabs and 40 odd panels/features I will only be using about 5(plus all of the administration tab). There is no app that I look forward to. I wish I could edit the main page to have launch, friends, netflix and XBL store. That is all I need.

Netflix is a mess too and everything top to bottom is slower on both my XBOX fat and slim. I wish you could edit the frontend to not include pictures of the movies I scroll over. I did see subtitles option on a movie for the first time though, I have not see a movie that supported it before but it may be coincidence.

Truth is I am a 30 year old gamer and I dont think the update was aimed at my age group. I dont have a facebook or see a reason to own a smartphone and Twitter is fucking retarded. Im old and the new dashboard is full of shit that is for the 16-25 crowd. Its something I will have to get more and more used to as time passes.

As a non-kinect user, I am pretty neutral on it.

Is it just me but I can't seem to find a way to just search arcade games specifically, which is rather annoying. Also I don't like the fact that I can't see all the party members from the dashboard when I hover over my friend's name, but have to select the party option first.

I know I'm nitpicking, but the older dashboard seemed less congested. I'll probably get used to it, but as of now I do prefer the older one.

Everything you mentioned can be launched from the main Home page, besides friends(which is only one tab to the right). To get to the game marketplace from your home all you do is go to the big tile in the middle and use the right anolog stick until there is a picture of Batman:AC and it says, "Dive into game marketplace". That same big tile can launch you to the Zune marketplace as well. Netflix can be launched from the quickplay tile in the bottom left. I've been a beta tester so I know the ins and outs of this new dashboard and I'm telling you it's much faster than the previous one. 

You can search for specific arcade games, it's called bing(you don't need kinect to use it). Just type in the arcade game and bam, there it is. Much faster than before.

The old way they showed your friends was annoying because if they were in a party it wouldn't always highlight your friend, but a random person, so you didn't know which friend it was. Now you can see exactly which friends are online and if you want to see how many friends are in a party it has it's own tab for that.

I guess I could just Bing it, but I tend to have the habit of browsing through arcade games randomly and downloading demos and buying games. I guess I'll just have to search online, but I don't see why they couldn't just keep all the games into neat categories like it used to be.

If you want to look for all arcade games go to the game marketplace, then go to the the tab that says "games". Click on the tile that says, "Game Type" which is in the top right corner. Then it will give you th option to click on arcade, games on demand, indie games, and xbox originals. Everything is catergorized just like the original dash, but it just looks different.  

Is Bing not working for anyone else as well? All I get is an endless busy icon. Maybe the system is overloaded?
It was working yesterday.
The whole new dashboard doesn't run all too well on my 360, lots of stuttering going on when icons slowly appear 1 by 1. Maybe it's on its last legs :( It's an old 20gb system.

Bing works perfectly fine for me...takes about 2 seconds for it to do the search thing and when you are typing it gives suggestions to make things easier.

And everything loads super fast now. It was really slow when I first got into the beta but now it's faster than it's ever been before, near instant in fact.

I honestly cannot comprehend how anyone would not like this new update more than the last one since it is better in literally every single way to the old one. I guess it's probably because I don't mind change where as for some people any sort of change from what they are used to completely messes with them and pisses them off (sometimes beyond reasoning)