The very bottom of the 360 is where you put in your wired controllers. As you can see, there are two slots. As for the Red Ring of Death, you will probably get it eventually. Now that Xbox sends Shipping Labels now, you can easily get your 360 back in like a week. I believe that the new 360s that hit shelves with the price-drop last week or whatever are installed with the Falcon Chipset, which, I believe, runs a lot quieter and a lot cooler (source:
this thread). When it comes to your two theories (making 360 stay on side and plug it directly), I believe they're true. When I play my games, I put the 360 on its side, and also plug it directly into the outlet. Keep in mind, that if you're thinking about buying an intercooler (cools the 360), it does more harm than good. Other than that, you should be set. Like I said, every 360 will RROD at least once in its lifetime.
And, I'm pretty sure the Pro has HDMI. A quick search on google "Xbox360 Pro + HDMI" produces about 3,530,000 results with the first page of results confirming HDMI. In addition, if you have Paypal or just plain cash, you should definitely check out the Video Game Trading category. A lot of CAGs sell/trade all the games you would ever want. You can easily find Halo 3 or Dead Rising on the forums cheaper than retail.
