Microsoft has announced the first of what they hope will be biannual updates to the XBOX 360's online dashboard, available next week. Here's what they've promised:

The first major change will be making downloads easier to find. This is disappointing, since their current system of slowly scrolling through hundreds of NBA and NFL team logos is many gamers' favorite way to spend 45 minutes.

The other change is to the marketplace. Users will be able to search for game demos by genre, and pictures and themes have their own sections. The official names for these sections haven't been released, but experts speculate they'll be called, "What Kind of Dumbass Pays $3 to Have a Picture of a Quake Monster Next to Their Name" and "Holy Crap! Seattle Seahawk Borders For Only $2!?" respectively.

The biggest addition is a download manager. Currently, when you're downloading something, you have your choice of either enjoying the exciting progress bar or leaving. Now, you can download up to six things at a time AND still play music or games. That's right, in one week, the XBOX 360 leaps into late 20th century of telecommunication!

There are lots of cute little things being added too, like the ability to fast forward and rewind videos you download and tell your system to go straight to the dashboard instead of booting the DVD. Say what you want about Bill Gates and how he'll one day kill us all, it's pretty benevolent for him to have dozens of UI programmers spend thousands of man hours to save me 11 minutes over the course of my lifetime.