TechStuffCanada

jargon-free tech news for non-technical people

32 Megabytes?

March 25, 2005 › Sandy McMurray | comment

I just read Sandy's fine rundown on the PSP, aka Really Expensive Gameboy with Pretensions. Two words. 32 Megabytes. Sony, what is up with that? You come out with a device that theoretically can play movies and music and you pack it with enough RAM to hold a Trident commercial?

If we want a reasonable amount of space for video, like a gigabyte, it will cost us as much as the handheld console itself? Sign me up.

And, speaking of video, exactly what am I going to watch? Movies on some proprietary mini-disc, that apart from Sony products, can only be used as a shot glass coaster? Movies I might have already bought on DVD? I think not.

Perhaps I'm supposed to convert existing video clips to a format that is practical for the PSP player. Few of us really consider that sort of thing fun (to see how un-fun visit this page). But, it would be more fun than swapping clips back and forth between the Paris Hilton-priced memory stick and a hard drive.

At first blush, the PSP reminds me of one of a wind-up, solar-powered, sports flashlight with a built-in radio. Lousy radio kludged on to a decent torch. Well, except the emergency flashlight doesn't need charging.

March 25, 2005 › Sandy McMurray | comment on this item