Chessboard pattern

Golfscript - 17 chars

~:N,{"X "N*>N<n}%

Analysis

~ convert input to an int
:N store in the variable N
,{...} for each value of [0...N-1]
"X "N* repeat "X " to give a string of N*2 characters
> take the substring starting from the loop index...
N< ...ending N characters later
n put a newline a the end of each string

Perl, 41 40

for$i(1..$_){say substr" X"x$_,$i%2,$_}

Perl 5.10 or later, run with perl -nE 'code' (n counted in code size)

Sample output:

$ perl -nE'for$i(1..$_){say substr" X"x 40,$i%2,$_}' <<<5
X X X
 X X
X X X
 X X
X X X
$ perl -nE'for$i(1..$_){say substr" X"x 40,$i%2,$_}' <<<8
X X X X
 X X X X
X X X X
 X X X X
X X X X
 X X X X
X X X X
 X X X X

Pyth, 13 chars

Note: Pyth is much too new to be eligible to win. However, it was a fun golf and I thought I'd share it.

VQ<*QX*d2N\XQ

Try it here.

How it works:

                       Q = eval(input())
VQ                     for N in range(Q):
  <         Q                                                        [:Q]
   *Q                                    (Q*                        )
     X*d2N\X                                assign_at(" "*2, N, "X")

Basically, this uses X to generate "X " or " X" alternately, then repeats that string Q times, and takes its first Q characters. This is repeated Q times.

How does the X (assign at) function work? It takes the original string, " " in this case, an assignment location, N in this case, and a replacement character, "X" in this case. Since Pyth's assignments are modular, this replaces the space at location N%2 with an X, and returns the resultant string, which is therefore "X " on the first, third, etc. lines, and " X" on the others.