Wombat Mobile I should be coding or sleeping instead of this...

I figured I would log my experience with my new PSP just in case it's useful for anyone else who just got one or is thinking about getting one. I've been reading a bunch of msgboards and people are running into problems, so maybe I'll stumble upon something useful.

Also, this type of log is always funny to look at 6 months or a year down the road and makes you wonder what the hell were you thinking at the time. I'm always up for a laugh at my own expense to kick my future ego down a notch. [Hey future self! [waves] You're looking tubby, how 'bout losing some weight?]

I was thinking a bit about the PSP last night and, how, in the past, I would never consider buying something like this. I used to drive a car to and from work, but now that I spend two hours a day on a train, my life has totally changed. It's a completely different lifestyle that I really didn't comprehend before while I was driving all the time.

The main thing I spend cycles on these days is "what do I do with these two hours a day I spend on the train?". How can I keep myself entertained or productive? My GPRS phone is ok for reading blogs, lurking in chatrooms, and playing texas holdem'. My laptop is good for coding and watching dvds, but isn't really practical when there's someone sitting in the seat next to me. So the PSP looks like a great device for commuters like me...

The playstation.com msg boards look like they're full of people reporting dead pixels on their new PSPs, but there's also this weird war going on with the Nintendo msg boards, and both sides seem to be trying to cause trouble on the others' forums. I'm extremely happy with my screen, I haven't seen any dust underneath or dead pixels yet, so I'm happy.

The first thing that blows you away about the PSP when you turn it on is the screen. The hype was justified about this screen, it's THAT good. Even detractors and negative reviews said the screen was amazing, and they're right. Unfortunately, I find that the vocabulary from my puny Ivy League undergraduate degree isn't adequate to do this screen justice. I'm thinking about pursuing a graduate degree just to come up with the proper hyperbole worthy of it.

When I first turned my PSP on and navigated though the setup, my thoughts jumped to movies like Minority Report, Blade Runner, Total Recall, and I, Robot. Futuristic movies where you think to yourself, "they did a good job with the special effects, editing, or cgi in that scene". I felt like I was holding in my hand something produced by Hollywood effects artists.

Then I went through a bunch of the menu options and explored around. The navigation surprised me at first, but it was a breeze after a couple of minutes and felt totally intuitive. I formatted my 512M Memory stick, which was a piece of cake. The only hurdle in my initial setup was getting Wifi to work. It takes a really, really long time to enter a 26 character WEP key. Ones and Zeroes are especially hard. I thought you might be able to enter numeric characters on the virtual keypad by holding it down for a few seconds, but that was not the case, I had to keep pressing the virtual keypad button to cycle through the characters. Holding it down just cycles through them very fast. This isn't bad for 2-9, but it seems like all the special characters are mapped to the One and Zero and it takes forever. I found the text entry method they used in Wipeout Pure to enter your profile to be much faster.

After getting Wifi setup, I played one game of Wipeout Pure and my fiance played one. Kind of fun, just ok, a little tricky to steer. Maybe it's better multiplayer.

Then we watched the beginning of Spiderman2, which was incredible. It's funny, I read a bunch of reviews that said the PSP was a good game device, but not much else. I totally disagree with this. For me, the games are secondary, it's all about the movie watching, and this is where I think the PSP shines. Not necessarily buying UMDs, which I doubt I will, but watching downloaded and coverted bittorrents.

To be continued...