Picked up my pre-order today, so far so good! The main reason I exchanged for my Elite was to see if the new Xbox was quieter in RL, which is its by a huge factor. I've got MW2 installing at the mo, and from 3m away can barely discern a hum - no more turbine hall, huzzah!
With no disk in it really is whisper quiet. There's a shrill "beep" when you use the DVD drive eject button to confirm you've actually touched it, as it's not illuminated in anyway that's probably a good thing.
Only issue I had was that the HDD was not detected first time I switched it on. One removal and insertion later and alls good, 227GB usable space. I'll ditch all of the pre-installed stuff before I get around to installing all my go-to games, add-ons, saves etc.
Suits my Samsung HDTV to a tee, one happy owner here!