well thats one of the reasons i got the xeno gear. One you open it up and install it you do not have to reopen it unless you want to take it off. you can do everything I did to it with out having the xeno top gear, but you have to open the console everytime you wanna rip a game from it or reflash the dvd drive. and I also liked the HDD to pc feature. Yes you will void your warrenty if you open ur box, but seeing how slick i am, I got the sticker off in one nice piece.

if you buy one hate, wait till they release the black one. (if its not total speculation) it will have 120 gig hdd and an HDMI output with true 1080p support. I heard it was going to retail for 479.00 bucks but i'm not sure.
right now you can still go on live and they do not know the difference. I'm sure one day they will catch it and probably ban your live account, but whatever i'll just get a new one if that happens and they games I want for live I will play on the unbanned, unhacked, uncopied one.
heres a link to a "hacking the 360 for dummies" tutorial by some guy named textbook. Its pdf and you can read up on it if you want.
http://360mods.net/Downloads/details/id=61.html