Well, I ended up doing something today I was'nt quite sure I was going to do.

A friend came over and she wanted to go out shopping for a PSP. Her name is Mandy and I've known her for over 10 years now. Anyway, she was surprised when her husband dropped hints yesterday that he wanted one. But she did'nt know anything about it, just knew she had called a couple stores in her area (northern RI) and nothing. So she called me in the early afternoon to see if she could come down and if I could take her out. I said sure.

We know we were'nt going to have any luck at some stores, so we headed for Best Buy, where they indeed had some in stock. I really was interested in one but I knew at the price I could'nt afford to get one and all the stuff that came with it. Once I had one in my hands, though, I was hooked. The unit is so damn sexy! Nice large LCD screen, lightweight, backlit, and really impressive how it handles. The guy was showing us the sampler disc with the unit and talking about his own personal experiences with one since he bought one last night.

At that point my friend pulled me to one side and said she knew about all the crap that was going on for me right now and that since she had extra tax return money Mandy offered me a deal. She told me she would buy me a PSP along with the Best Buy 2 year warrenty -- $40 for that -- if I agreed to repay her in the course of the next year. Plus, since I wanted to do many more things with the PSP, a 512 MB stick for $70 for a VERY early Christmas gift.

So at that point I decided I could sell some more stuff on Amazon and pinch the belt by canceling some pre-orders I had planned and go ahead and get it. I picked up a Accesory Kit -- $30 that came with a carrying case, a cleaning cloth, a strap on, a screen protector, a car adapater, and another pair of headphones. Plus I got a USB cable and transfer disc for the PSP for $10 to transfer movies and music over.

Which just left me with two games I was interested in -- Metal Gear Acid (a card based version of the famous game series) and Untold Legends (a hack and slash game like Diablo) to buy myself.

Plus, the way I saw it, it's a investment. I don't have a music player yet and with a memory card that size I can download hundreds of songs on to it. PLus movies! I can transfer programs and anything else from my PC onto it as well. So the PSP can do three different things, and even more in the future. The only other thing I'll need to get is a battery pack -- none was sold seperatly -- as the one drawback of the PSP is that it only has about a 5-6 hour battery charge.

I've only had a little bit of time to check it out, but I'm really impressied. No dead pixels that I can see on my unit. Spider-Man 2 looks REALLY sharp -- even better then a DVD. The Sampler Disc looks good as well. I have'nt tried my two games or transfering anything over yet. My only complaint is the volume is kind of soft -- even with headphones and turned all the way up. But it's lightweight, quiet, and only needed about 90 minutes to fully charge the battery.

If anyone needs a extra headphone and strap, I'm not using the ones that came with the Sony PSP.