[ThirdMarioBro]

I bought a PSP-1000 and a 3000. The differences between the two are few, but I'll give a run-down.

The older 1000 series (aka PSP Phat from here on out) is easy as pie to hack. Do a TIFF exploit and you're golden. I did this years (years? Dude...) ago to run emulators and junk. Good games combined with old Nintendo emulators made the PSP a cool system, but it had a fatal flaw. The D-pad was sh*t. It was so stiff and unpleasant to use that it hindered my enjoyment of the platform for a good while.

Overall though, the PSP-1000 was a great little device, but the new releases started to trickle down to nothing after a while. Fortunately, rather than let the PSP die at the hand of the DS, Sony pulled a 180 and threw money behind the thing, kissed developer ass, and brought it back from the brink. Then came the PSP Slim (aka, the PSP-2000 and 3000 models). These are the current "regular" PSPs you see in stores now. Much improved overall. Its lighter, cheaper, and the controls are all fixed. The D-pad is actually good enough to reliably play portable fighting games for the first time. I love the thing to death. Its only flaw is that its a tad more of a pain to hack for the purpose of running all that cool illegitimate stuff (notice I said "hard", but not "impossible"). Overall, I think the PSP-3000 is a brilliant little machine.

For the record, I buy my games legal, but I wanted the convenience of loading them all on the memory stick. Hacking the PSP made this a breeze. I buy the game on UMD, then downloaded me a bootleg copy to put on the system. It saved battery, time, and space doing things this way.

But of course, there's some of us that don't want to deal in this shady realm of piracy. Also, you've got to realize that I'm a possessive freak. I'm totally psycho about Digital Rights Management and having hard copies of my software, so buying games digitally and leaving Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft the keys to my purchases has never been a comfortable situation for me.

If DRM is a problem for you, go with the PSP-3000 and get the physical copies of new releases. If not, the PSPgo might be good since you're a new owner. Let me say that as an existing PSP owner, I would never give the PSPgo a second glance because there's no way to transfer my existing software library. I've got around 25 PSP games. Do they want me to re-buy all those games on the new machine? No way.

Fortunately for you, the PSPgo is targeted at new users with no "baggage". If you have never owned a PSP before, you can just buy games online and download them direct. They've got pretty much all the stuff worth owning on the PlayStation Store. Its easy to manage, much more portable, and the little thing does look awesome. But it still has one MAJOR problem. The battery isn't removable. Like the PS3 controllers before it, you can't take the battery out of the PSPgo if it wears out from usage and will no longer hold a charge. What do you do then? Handhelds aren't like an iPod. You don't throw them out every couple of years (or less) for a new model. Do you send it to Sony for an expensive repair just to get a new battery? Do you buy another and transfer your games over? What if there is a limit to how many times you can transfer your digital purchases?

Its a shady situation. That's why overall, I'd recommend the standard PSP Slim over the PSpgo any day. Its got a bigger screen, wonderful controls, you can still access the PlayStation store, the battery is replaceable, you've still got access to retail software, and most importantly, its nearly a full hundred bucks cheaper. The fact that the standard model is still on store shelves should tell you that even Sony doesn't have enough faith in the Go than to not shove it down people's throats as the only option for new users. The PSPgo is a good idea ruined by DRM and the greed of the corporate suits at Sony trying exasperatingly to kill the used games market.