…and I buy a Playstation 3, against my better judgment. The tax free weekend saved me $30-40, and was the catalyst for me deciding to buy it this weekend, but the real reason I bought now was because Sony is phasing out PS3’s with hardware emulation built into the machine. I have over 100 PS2 games and a PS1 game collection that’s similarly large. The newer PS3 models, ushered in with the current 80GB + free copy of Motorstorm, use software based emulation which debuted with the European PS3 model, and there have been countless tales of inadequate emulation, crashing games, graphical glitches, etc.

Meanwhile what I really want is an XBOX 360, but MS has had a terrible reliability problem. Supposedly the models designed to address this finally rolled into retail this week, but based on past performance I’m going to play wait and see for a while. Plus they have a model coming soon with a smaller die (65nm) cpu that will be much cooler and hopefully quieter as well. Since heat is almost definitely the culprit in all the 360 hardware failures I’m waiting for that to come to market.

So…all that by way of explaining that I bought the PS3 with pretty low expectations. It’s been deservedly catching a beating in the press for its price and its lack of games. Have to say after spending a weekend with it that I’m pleasantly surprised. The hardware is great – nice design, good looking, and it feels like a solid piece of kit. Software wise, I assessed this before I bought it and here’s the thing