Quote Originally Posted by symbolofmylife View Post
If you eventually activate the xbox live service, it will check if your gamertag is in use by someone else on the network already. If it is, you've got a problem. You will have to change your gamertag to something new, and in the process you will lose all your current game progress.
Not quite true, actually. You will have to change your gamertag if it's already in use, but you won't lose any Achievements or anything else. I had an offline profile for about 8 months or so, and had to change the gamertag when I finally registered and went onto LIVE. No loss of anything.

Quote Originally Posted by weakest_link View Post
question ... can you get mspoints evens if you have silver account?
Yup. You'll have to have it LIVE-enabled, though. And make sure you buy for the right region - US or UK.