PSP Go... Again

Okay, I'm not trying to beat a dead horse with a stick here, but I've found out some interesting things about the PSP Go that I thought I might share with you. Yes, I know that I've already done 2 articles about it, but I just thought these few articles were interesting.

First off, I found this article on one of my favorite gadget sites. It's a pretty detailed review of the PSP Go. In the article they give a pretty informed opinion on the upsides and downsides of the Go. I highly recommend checking out the review. The review is a bit lengthy, but I think it's worth the read if you're as interested in the Go as I am.

The second article is from the same website. Basically, the article explains that, while they did try, Sony will not be releasing a converter to transfer your old UMD games to digital format... yet. A lot of people are still hoping for some way to get their old UMD games onto the PSP Go, but apparently there are a lot of legal issues in the way that are preventing Sony from releasing one. I can understand that. While Sony owns the rights to the UMD format, it's the game and movie companies themselves that own the rights to what is contained on said UMD. There would need to be universal allowance from the developers of the games before a UMD converter could be realized. But I, along with several others apparently, are still keeping our hopes up for something to come in the future.

Although the converter is a no-go, Sony is going to try to placate customers and boost sales of the PSP Go by expanding the selection on the PlayStation Network. On October 1st of this year (the same day the PSP Go is released) Sony will be increasing the amount of titles in the store to include more than 225 games, 2,300 movies, and 13,300 TV episodes, which, to me, sounds nice, but I'll hold judgement until I see what titles will be added. Who knows? They could just be adding a bunch of dumb games. Also, while the Playstation Network does sell normal, full length, large games, they will be introducing smaller, cheaper games called PSP Minis. The PSP Minis are Sony's attempt to combat the casual gamers who turn to the Apple iPod Touch for cheaper, easier titles. This sounds pretty cool, but again, I'll hold off judgement until I've tried a few of them.

The hardware has been changed slightly as well. Other than the obvious changes such as a smaller screen, the slide out controls, and no UMD drive; the analog stick has been moved to what people are calling "an awkward place for people who are used to the PSP 3000". Also, instead of the usual USB mini port, the PSP Go has been given a proprietary USB port, which means that none of the old PSP accesories are going to work with the Go.
All in all, I'm still really tempted to go pick up a PSP Go when they come out, but a voice is telling me to wait for a couple of reasons, which are: With a new sell price of $250.00, my wallet wants me to either wait for a price drop, or until I see a used system in a Game Stop. Or, wait and see if a better system comes out, such as the rumored/hoped for PSP2. Second, I do want to wait and see if, somehow, Sony is able to devise a way to digitize all my old UMDs. I just have too much money invested in those little discs to set them aside.

Archos: Competition For Apple?

Time for another technology blog. I haven't done one since the PSP Go post I did back in July. Today it's going to be about media players.
So, my iPod Touch is slowly but surely heading towards death. I've only had it for about a year, but apparently the 2nd Gen iPod Touch batteries don't last as long as the 1st Gen ones. I'm mostly to blame for it dying. I use it all the time and as such, I have to charge it almost every other night. But, now the battery doesn't want to hold a charge for more than a few hours. So, I'm thinking it's time for a replacement right about now. I thought about just buying another Touch, but I don't really want to have to keep replacing it every year, so I've been looking around at what my options are.
I want to stay with something that has a touch screen simply because they are usually easier to navigate through music and such than other players. I know that the Zune HD is coming out in the next month or so, and I really considered buying one. But, I'm a Mac user and I'm not sure how well a Microsoft player would work with a Mac. So, I tossed that idea out the window. There aren't a whole lot of huge media player brands out there. Microsoft and Apple have pretty much cornered the market on those.
So, I started looking around at what my other options are. After wading through the various smaller brands of media players, most of which did not have touch screens and had smaller hard drives than I was looking for, I came across the Archos 5 which met pretty much all of my requirements. It had a touch screen (bigger than the iPod Touch's), a large hard drive (250 gigs at it's biggest) and it supported more video and audio files than most other media players. It's also got an internet browser built in that allows viewing of Flash pages (Something the iPod Touch cannot do). There's even a built in PDF viewer. Granted, to be able to access the full range of the Archos 5's capabilities you have to download a few plugins, some of which cost some money (the ones that allow for more media types), which isn't really a problem to me. In the end, I decided to go with an Archos.

Now, the downside to buying something other than the iPod Touch is that I can't use all of those great apps that I downloaded during the course of owning a Touch. I mulled this over in my head and decided that I wasn't too worried about that. I have some great apps on my Touch, but it's gotten to the point that I don't use any of them anymore. Mostly, I use it for music, movies, and pictures, and with the Archos' huge hard drive, I shouldn't have any want for space for those.

My final say: I've owned an Archos before and was mightily pleased with it, but sold it for an iPod with a larger hard drive. I've been pleased with what I've seen about the Archos 5 (My friend has one that he let me fiddle around with for a while) and I'm very excited to buy one.

If you're looking for a large capacity media player and want to stick it to Apple and Microsoft, I definitely recommend the Archos line.