Wednesday 7 September 2005

Pic of the day: Black is a very becoming color for a handheld entertainment unit. Except for the screen.

Almost PSP

Yesterday I was home from work because I had the head cold of the year. I would just have been spraying my poor coworkers with virus like a garden hose gone wild. Besides the sneezing, my nose was running like a leaky faucet. Yay. So, I had the day off to play Urbz while going through tissues and munching vitamin C.

Today I was back at work. I also bought a Sony PSP (Playstation Portable). Here is how that went.

The guy in the shop is an expert on the stuff, and instructed me to upgrade the software from 1.5 to 2.0 first thing. This upgrade is on the demo disk (UMD) which comes with the PSP in the Value Pack. So I put in the disk, turned on the PSP, and it started up quite fine. I went through the first-start questions, then when I got up the home menu, I chose to upgrade to 2.0. At this point the machine was recharging its batteries from the grid, and the thick user handbook assured me that it could be use in that situation. Well, the screen went black after perhaps 2 minutes. It never woke up again. Not then, not when fully charged, not the next day.

I gave it the benefit of doubt, and decided to go back the next day and have it replaced. But there was some trepidation, as I remembered what had happened with EverQuest (also a Sony product to some degree). If this started to go in the same direction, I would decidedly jump off before I get hospitalized again! Thou shalt not tempt the LORD thy God.

On the other hand, there is no specific commandment saying "Thou shalt boycott Sony". In fact, the Sony diskman portable minidisk player is one of my favorites, full of features, durable and with excellent battery life. So tomorrow I'll give Sony another chance.

And it's not like I'm in any hurry. I already have the Nintendo DS, after all.

***

Yes, it seems that handheld gadgets is my current fad. It is a rather expensive one, but luckily my credit card is pretty much cleared and it's payday in less than a week. I intend to compare the two main handheld experiences of our time, and tell you folks what I find out. At least there are only two real contenders (the pocket PC is more businesslike, and I have had one for years). With perfumes there was just no end to it. Before I gave up, I had enough to smell good for the rest of my natural life, or at least until incontinence takes me.