Which starter kit should I try first?

Ive never heard of captain dunsel. Dont know what that means. Anyways, I would stick with Slayers, it is pretty much the standard.

Do it manually. This way you'll know what's in yer box, and you can fix what will fail.

Doing it manually is the much better way.

I personally am a fan of play now and tweak later. I used slayers and it was easy to figure out how the setting and everything else worked by messing with a working copy. I'll be setting up a friends box later this week, so I'd be very interested if someone already familiar with both did a comparison of the 2.
Thanks

I came to the Xbox as total newbie and I found it very time consuming and confusing to install each app individually, after I had spent a full week installing various apps (trail and error - mostly error, lol) I discovered Slayers CD, OMG how I wished I had found it a week earlier!!!

I agree with Hertzae, I think people should take the easy route and get it all installed correctly and hassle free with the Slayers CD, then if they want to learn/tweak afterwards it's always an option (and if they fuck up, they can always re-install the Slayer CD)

I heartily recommend all newbies use Slayers CD to setup their Xbox's then (if they want to) play with settings and learn.

Go on using auto-installers noobs. Stay noobs. Never try to learn anything.
This way you'll keep posting the same questions in the same forums to know why your nicely auto-installed box doesn't work anymore.
This is not that hard to read a few tutorials to know what you are doing. I'm sure you'll feel much better when you know (knowledge is power) than when just being an assisted noob.

I agree with the do it yourself and learn... But I also believe that if you go with the auto style, you get to see what your box is capable of and then if it's not doing everything you want your forced to learn... I was a big newbie with Linux, and I installed Mandrake.. tought me alot.. then I went to a Red Hat distro to learn more.. If I was to start witha homebrew linux or Slackware it would have totally turned me away from Linux all together...

When I first heard that mod chips came out for the X-box, I didn't want to waste my time... I thoguht it was for just playing home burned cd's like the old PSone and such... After seeing a friend with a modded Xbox and the install of Slayers.. I was wowed... It looked just like a personal Media Center HP I had seen at Best Buy... I orderd my Chip and Installed with Slayers... Everything worked like my friends...

If I would have tried everything from scratch it might have worked... but if woulden't have I might have been fustrated and sold the chip on Ebay... I have since upgraded my HD from a 40 to a 100 gig drive... I have installed it all from scratch... Only problem I had from scratch was finding a working XBMP.

So let the Newbies learn... And let the newbies grow... Dont hold someone back just cause the way you think is the best for you is the best for someone else...