Even though you can do alot with a softmod, I personally think it's the cheap way out. I've seen WAY more stories of people screwing up xbox's via soft-modding then via hardmods. Too many times people deleted original content from their harddrive and then were sol because they couldn't access the drive. Also it's a constant pain in the ass to have to sign every xbe when you want to use it. Just pick up a good cheap Xecuter Lite, or any of the newer chips.