Got my PSP last night, had to visit three 24-hour Walmart stores to find one where the electronics department was stocked, open, and staffed. For games I went with Need for Speed Underground Rivals and Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 Remix. Most of the titles that really interest me seem to have been pushed back to May…
The PSP is wide but not terribly thick. It holds on to fingerprints like a bank holds money. It reflects better than most automobile vanity mirrors. The remote is made from the cheapest-feeling plastic I’ve ever had the mispleasure of touching. The ergonomics are a disaster, like just about every Sony product with buttons. The mini-USB connector is a nice touch — turns the $250 console into a $15 Memory Stick reader — but it doesn’t charge the battery.
But it sure is pretty. Especially the screen, so long as there isn’t too much sunlight. At 7:30AM on my east-facing balcony it was basically just a black rectangle…
I can’t help thinking how much more the PSP could be if Sony’s head weren’t shoved so far up their ass. Switch to ordinary mini-discs, make it an MD recorder, allow PC access over USB. Add a microphone, TOSlink, Bluetooth. PIM, browser, e-mail, PC sync, an IM client with a P2P mode. Optional keyboard and camera attachments. Can you feel that?
Oh well. I’ll get some use out of the MP3 player with the meager 32MB memory stick that Sony included. The chapters from my German for American Idiots audio books are a mere 4MB, so that little stick should more than cover my daily commute. Just gotta pick up one of those cassette adapter thingies for the car…
