When I bought my Xbox 360 I looked into going on Xbox live but as there was a subscription fee I decided against it. Since I moved into my flat however the temptation has slowly increased and this week I finally gave in. It had been a long time coming but while I was in Town on Tuesday night I decided to buy myself the official Microsoft Xbox 360 wireless network adaptor. I thought rather than run another cable around my living room I'd take advantage of the BT wireless hub I have for my broadband and connect my Xbox up remotely.

From reading the box it seemed to be nice and easy. You just attached the adaptor to the back of your machine, switched it on and hey presto you were pretty much ready to go online. The reality, whilst still quite straightforward isn't quite that simple. It all went according to plan until the switching it all on and connecting instantly. It took about 3 hours to actually get the Xbox to pick up an IP address and the appropriate Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU). There wasn't a great deal that I could actually do to help it find either of these apart from keeping running the tests. It seemed that the night I tried it all there was a problem with Xbox live and so 99% of the time you shouldn't encounter these problems.

Once all the tests were complete, which despite the time it took was relatively easy the rest of the Xbox live process was very straight forward. Of course you need your paid subscription to go with your wireless connection but as far as setting this up is concerned it was quite straight forward. The connection to the machine is made through the USB port on the back of the console and there are a couple of holes to clip it into. So from a physical connection point of view that's even easier than how the machine connects to the network. If you do have any problems with connectivity then there is a whole website devoted to helping you set it up, which if the above all fails seems to be very useful.

My biggest concern with going wireless was going to be the strength of the connection from the BT Hub to the Xbox itself. So far thought that hasn't been too much of a problem. It only seems to have slowed down a little once and while it made the game of Fifa I was playing jump a little it didn't interrupt the game too much. Other than that the connection has been really good and despite my initial reservations I've been quite impressed with the quality of the wireless connection.

Not everyone will have a BT wireless Hub though and if you don't but want to get a wireless connection for your Xbox you then have to invest in a wireless router as well. Unless of course you already have one in which case its again very simple to set your Xbox up onto an existing network. The process is much the same as connecting to the BT Hub, in that the Xbox will pick up an Ip Address and should then find the rest of the details it requires by itself without any further prompting from the user. I found this to be an added bonus with the Wireless adaptor and it means it's not too complicated if your not too sure what your doing with wireless connections.

One final feature that the wireless adaptor offers the user is the ability to connect wirelessly between the console and your PC. This allows you to stream movies, music and pictures from your PC to the Xbox. Of course again this requires you to have a wireless adaptor and network set up but it is another feature that works quite well. The strength of the stream obviously varies a little but on the whole the signal the wireless adaptor receives seems to be pretty constant.

Overall the Xbox wireless adaptor seems to have been a very useful purchase. The connection seems to be quite constant, it doesn't look too out of place on the console and the installation, as long as the service is working, is a piece of cake. The only downside to the wireless adaptor is infact the price. I picked mine up for £59.99 and although I will get a lot of use out of it, that still seems like a lot of money when you consider the Ethernet cable comes included with the Xbox 360. Would I recommend it though? Yes I definitely would. It may cost a lot in the short term but the Live system is worth the investment and it saves a load more cables in my living room.

Amazon: £54.98
HMV: £59.99
www.Xbox.com/setup