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Fifty Dollars
Rap,
Most of your technical complaints I think are spot-on. It sounds like what you really want is an Xbox emulator (or at least a dashboard emulator) for Windows. With some limitations, I've no doubt that's what MS will be moving towards, but as with any of their 1.x products, there are lots of missing features and rough spots. It exists mainly to push aside others working in the same space, like the free applications you mention (Xfire, etc).
At several points you compare those "free" applications to a $50 Gold account on Live. I'm not sure that's a fair comparison w/r/t GFW though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but unlike on the Xbox, you can play games like H2V online with a Silver account-- at least, that's how I read the description. I'm sure there are extras you get for going Gold, but I thought multiplayer online wasn't one of them.