Christmas Party & PSP/DS Diatribe
by ::G @ 2004-12-29 12:04
There's a brief description of Christmas as the Welch household, Japan branch, at the OSU Peeps in Japan blog.
So I had a lapse of financial judgement and bought Sachie an iMac G5. I sort of wanted one, and she's been talking about buying it herself for the past couple months. In a sense, I got it for selfish reasons: so I could mess with it but not have all the guilt of spending on an expensive toy for myself, and so she would have something to occupy her time, thus buying me more time alone. On the other hand, it wasn't cheap, and means I have to defer buying some things for myself. (One being a Mini-ITX-based motherboard to use as a server with the system on solid-state storage. On the other hand, I don't really have time to mess anyway.)
Sachie did come through with a PSP, though! She had to pre-order it, and apparently was the first person to reserve one at Nojima—but the last person to pick it up. I actually like it a lot, except the WLAN doesn't work so well. (It's only 802.11b supporting only WEP. The system doesn't like using dashes in passwords, and won't recognize them as being a valid character—this is a bug. Further, even if a non-dash password is used, I get an error message. If I turn off WEP on both the PSP and the WAP, everything works. I have two other devices running on the WEP-based WLAN, so this is a PSP thing.) The game she got me was "Moji Pittan Daijiten", not unlike Scrabble, but with fewer restrictions on connecting words. Noel bought his own PSP up in Hanyu, and was disappointed with its lack of web browsing capabilities and alarm clock functionality. Well, Sony can always upgrade the firmware.... The PSP has the same easy-to-use interface as the PSX, which is cool. I didn't appreciate the PSX interface until I tried to use another company's HDD/DVD recorder—the UI factor is noticeably better.
One other thing I gave Sachie was a Nintendo DS, with "Hitofude". That was a hit with her friend Kitajima-san, and Noel too, but not enough for him to buy one. There's a clear division of likely users between the DS and the PSP: the DS is more geared toward kids, both in price and capabilities, whereas the PSP has more non-game functionality. For example, the PSP can be used to view video (special MPEG-4) and photos (JPEG), as well as listen to music (ATRAC and certain MP3). I say certain MP3 because Noel could only play certain ones on the PSP that would play fine on his laptop. Seems like things encoded with lame work fine. Sony's got some issues to work out.
One additional point of note is that the DS is made in China, whereas the PSP is made in Japan. Chinese-made stuff in general is inferior to Japanese-made stuff. (No more China-is-a-sleeping-giant crap...they ain't asleep, and they don't have the same burning desire and diligence that the Japanese had for most of the 20th century.) I think the quality problems with the PSP were more along the lines of low volume forcing Sony to relax their manufacturing test spec to produce as many units as possible. Perhaps later Sony will start MFG outside Japan. That's the way HGST does it: prototype HDDs are made in Japan, switching into mass-production units that are built overseas later in development. Although there are a few physical UI design quirks on the PSP, I think it's a, shall we say, sexier design. The display is larger and higher-resolution than the DS's. The PSP can save user data on flash memory rather than relying on the game card. The DS is bulkier and feels less solid than the PSP. Battery life on the PSP is an issue, however, especially if Sony intends it to be a serious portable media player (even the iPod can go for 10 hrs...the PSP needs a display-off button to maximize battery life for audio playback at least). An integrated web browser would be useful. Another thing I don't like about the PSP is that fingerprints show too easily on the device body. They need to change the finish from glossy to a more matte type. Both game machines are interesting devices, but I think Nintendo's going to have a much less comfortable position from here on out.
Wonder how much a PSP dev kit is? And when is Sony going to release a UMD recorder??
I should really post pictures on here, but it's a pain to have to log into my other site and maintain a separate directory structure there. If I weren't so lazy (and wary of pitfalls) with the newly-acquired Google photo service, Picasa. Maybe I'll give flickr a look.
So I had a lapse of financial judgement and bought Sachie an iMac G5. I sort of wanted one, and she's been talking about buying it herself for the past couple months. In a sense, I got it for selfish reasons: so I could mess with it but not have all the guilt of spending on an expensive toy for myself, and so she would have something to occupy her time, thus buying me more time alone. On the other hand, it wasn't cheap, and means I have to defer buying some things for myself. (One being a Mini-ITX-based motherboard to use as a server with the system on solid-state storage. On the other hand, I don't really have time to mess anyway.)
Sachie did come through with a PSP, though! She had to pre-order it, and apparently was the first person to reserve one at Nojima—but the last person to pick it up. I actually like it a lot, except the WLAN doesn't work so well. (It's only 802.11b supporting only WEP. The system doesn't like using dashes in passwords, and won't recognize them as being a valid character—this is a bug. Further, even if a non-dash password is used, I get an error message. If I turn off WEP on both the PSP and the WAP, everything works. I have two other devices running on the WEP-based WLAN, so this is a PSP thing.) The game she got me was "Moji Pittan Daijiten", not unlike Scrabble, but with fewer restrictions on connecting words. Noel bought his own PSP up in Hanyu, and was disappointed with its lack of web browsing capabilities and alarm clock functionality. Well, Sony can always upgrade the firmware.... The PSP has the same easy-to-use interface as the PSX, which is cool. I didn't appreciate the PSX interface until I tried to use another company's HDD/DVD recorder—the UI factor is noticeably better.
One other thing I gave Sachie was a Nintendo DS, with "Hitofude". That was a hit with her friend Kitajima-san, and Noel too, but not enough for him to buy one. There's a clear division of likely users between the DS and the PSP: the DS is more geared toward kids, both in price and capabilities, whereas the PSP has more non-game functionality. For example, the PSP can be used to view video (special MPEG-4) and photos (JPEG), as well as listen to music (ATRAC and certain MP3). I say certain MP3 because Noel could only play certain ones on the PSP that would play fine on his laptop. Seems like things encoded with lame work fine. Sony's got some issues to work out.
One additional point of note is that the DS is made in China, whereas the PSP is made in Japan. Chinese-made stuff in general is inferior to Japanese-made stuff. (No more China-is-a-sleeping-giant crap...they ain't asleep, and they don't have the same burning desire and diligence that the Japanese had for most of the 20th century.) I think the quality problems with the PSP were more along the lines of low volume forcing Sony to relax their manufacturing test spec to produce as many units as possible. Perhaps later Sony will start MFG outside Japan. That's the way HGST does it: prototype HDDs are made in Japan, switching into mass-production units that are built overseas later in development. Although there are a few physical UI design quirks on the PSP, I think it's a, shall we say, sexier design. The display is larger and higher-resolution than the DS's. The PSP can save user data on flash memory rather than relying on the game card. The DS is bulkier and feels less solid than the PSP. Battery life on the PSP is an issue, however, especially if Sony intends it to be a serious portable media player (even the iPod can go for 10 hrs...the PSP needs a display-off button to maximize battery life for audio playback at least). An integrated web browser would be useful. Another thing I don't like about the PSP is that fingerprints show too easily on the device body. They need to change the finish from glossy to a more matte type. Both game machines are interesting devices, but I think Nintendo's going to have a much less comfortable position from here on out.
Wonder how much a PSP dev kit is? And when is Sony going to release a UMD recorder??
I should really post pictures on here, but it's a pain to have to log into my other site and maintain a separate directory structure there. If I weren't so lazy (and wary of pitfalls) with the newly-acquired Google photo service, Picasa. Maybe I'll give flickr a look.
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