What if you chose not to activate it at that time?

I've had my elite since October, i wanted to turn on the gold membership right now but it doesn't look like I can....wtf.

*sigh* guess I have to wait until tomorrow to get onto COD4 online. :( There's no telephone support at this hour.

EDIT: OOOOOOOH. I see how this works. Looks like you have to create a new ID on Live. That's why I couldn't see the option pop up when I was logged under my old silver Live ID.

Isn't there anyway to activate this trial under my old(er) silver Live ID? It doesn't reallly matter to me...it just has my bragging stats for Bioshock, which aren't anything to brag about at all. So I could toss that one and stick with the new one instead. *shrugs* Just makes things cumbersome though.

This is so confusing. None of this gets explained in the manuals at all.

In theory, it would almost appear that you can create Live ID's indefinitely and keep renewing gold Live membership. But the offering probably has something to do with the serial number of the unit being transmitted online back to Xbox Live Central or something like that I presume. Besides, people wouldn't be able to maintain stats without the ability to transfer them to one account to another.