Received mine on January 5th and have loved it ever since. I know a lot of other folks are too busy complaining and whining about theirs over at Gamefaqs to enjoy it but lately I' ve actually been a lot more into PSP gaming than I have been into current-gen console gaming. With the exception of Untold Legends, I like all of the games in my collection.
The hardware is awesome as far as I' m concerned. The one major problem I have with it is the usual " I HATE Sony' s D-pad design" speech I' m always repeating. To me, Sony' s d-pad design just doesn' t feel well-designed for quick reflex/fast action games. Thankfully the analog nub picks up the slack in 2D games that support it.
The other problem is the sound level, I wish the thing was louder, but I can get an external solution for that minor problem. Other than that, it' s a wonderful little gizmo with a big beautiful screen (albeit one that' s easily smudged and scratched) as well as a variety of nice multimedia features.
The movie playing feature kicks a$$!
I love UMD movies, have 12 so far and that collection will continue to grow. I know good and well how to rip and encode DVD movies as MP4 video files and transfer them onto memory stick BUT I choose not to, I find the process to be a waste of time especially when I can get the vastly superior UMD version and not have to constantly swap movies in and out of memory stick.. For stuff not available as UMDs yet or I already own the DVD versions of, I' ll use the MP4-memory stick option of course. But if there' s a UMD version then I' m not wasting my time.
MP3 playback is another nice feature although I' ll rarely ever use it. I have a mini-disc player so I' m all set in the music department, though, once in a while I will use the PSP to quickly audition some audio files before transferring them over to mini-disc....
The JPG viewer is a feature I used once with no plans to bother using again in the future other than to store incriminating photos of people.
The web browser included with Firmware version 2.0 is cool, It' s really slow paced trying to navigate around web-sites with the analog nub and D-pad, and inputting text with the onscreen keypad, but the sites appear nicely on the PSP screen and there are peripherals in the works to help make the web browsing experience less umm, cumbersome.
< Message edited by Terry Bogard -- 3 Sep 05 14:49:17 >