Alright, I’m down to a few hours before the very end of my vacation time visiting my folks and to date I’ve read at least 2 separate web posts where people saw fit to trash-talk the Sony PSP. Granted, the two arguments had very different attitudes and very different motivations, but both posts involved an absolutely dismissive tone. I won’t go into details about arguing against those posts (heck I agree with some of them: Sony isn’t the best company in the world and they certainly haven’t made a bug-free product line). But what they did do is produce a device that happens to suit my life just fine.
So here is what I’ve been doing with my PSP these past two weeks.
One: ever since the 2.00 firmware, I’ve been going wireless wherever I can… short of paying for it. I can access my web-mail from my brother’s apartment, at my parents house, or anywhere there’s a free wi-fi connection. Heck, this week I’ve saved a lot of time checking in by not having to boot up the PC in the living room and bugging my folks who might be watching television.
Two: I’m listening to RSS podcasts. Typically I save shows to my memory stick and let it run while I’m getting ready for bed or early in the morning. Alright, I need to raise a point here where I trash Sony a bit: what the hell is up with MS prices? If I had my way, they wouldn’t cost 25% more than other flash media. Why else do you think 4Gb sticks are still a rarity?
Three: I spent plenty of time watching anime fansubs on it. I can understand some people arguing over being hunched over a tiny handheld screen for a full-length movie. That’s why I take my portable video in half-hour episode form. As an aside, I’d also like to point out that among the mainstream portable video players, PSP sports one of the biggest 16x9 screens available. But I wish it supported more file formats so that I wouldn’t have to convert all my videos.
Four: games of course! Actually, I hadn’t played much in the way of games this week, but I did pick up the Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel. It’s a multi-media version of the hit IDW comic book adaptation of the old MGS game from the PS1 days. Very cool innovative way to read a book. Before that it was oldies like Ridge Racers and Hot Shots Golf Open Tee.
I’ll end this post addressing the quality of games on this platform. You have to take this device with the context in which it was introduced. It is not a next-gen machine (and you wouldn’t be able to squeeze in that technology into such small machine now anyway). But what it sets out to do, it does very well: it is a portable version of a PS2. If you didn’t like the games on PS2, well, I’d be hard-pressed to convince you to buy into PSP because it has mind-blowing games (because it doesn’t). But it does offer several cross-platform games like racing sims, sports titles, and various action-adventure games.
Alright, I’m down to a few hours before the very end of my vacation time visiting my folks and to date I’ve read at least 2 separate web posts where people saw fit to trash-talk the Sony PSP. Granted, the two arguments had very different attitudes and very different motivations, but both posts involved an absolutely dismissive tone. I won’t go into details about arguing against those posts (heck I agree with some of them: Sony isn’t the best company in the world and they certainly haven’t made a bug-free product line). But what they did do is produce a device that happens to suit my life just fine.
3 comments:
Cool, can u browse the net on this?
Yes, but it's not exactly suitable for interactivity. The browser has limited RAM access and the method of input is less than desireable (a pop-up virtual keyboard). But it'll get you into Yahoo or Hotmail easy enough.
Nice!
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