That's the irony of it. When you compress, you're supposed to store more content per byte compared to uncompressed methods. Therefore, you'll save tremendously if you're reading from reading in the media which requires mechanical movements such as UMD drive. Compression will save battery life due to lesser read from the disc. But depending on algorithm, it depends if the battery saving will be offset by decompression by the processor. So my guess here is the decompression actually makes the battery life worse, because reading from memory stick shouldn't be a battery draining process anyway. But i'm surprised that the memory stick registers more read when using CSO than during ISO in my real life experience with my PSP. Isn't compressed mode supposed to lead to lesser reading but more decompressing process? Someone care to share some light here?

Yea. Probably its the implementation. For some games it is no good even you're using high speed memory sticks, such as GTA : Vice City. The lag is so unbearable just for that saving of 300Mb. I'm sticking with ISO for all the games that i currently play. Probably CSO for lesser played or stored games.

What a quick transaction. Hopefully its not done outdoor where you can't examine the screen properly for dead/hot pixels. I bought mine in a quick manner too, my transaction is sealed in 10mins. I just tested the buttons and the screen for dead/hot pixels. I found that running a game will be sufficient, as the game load screen is white, followed by a black screen. Any dead/hot pixels should be visible when you start a game, and once inside the game, you can test all the button functions. As for wifi, i just got the seller to show me how it works. Bingo! I'm one happy customer and the transaction is sealed. But that guy took another 30min just to stick the screen protector for me and load some games into my new 4gb memory stick. After buying the PSP on August, i have already convinced another 2 of my friends to buy one themselves. Its so hard to convince them since the new PSP-3000 is just around the corner. Now with all the issues surrounding the new PSP, my friends and I are all glad we have bought ours just before the price hike. Cheers!

Yes, regarding that, I do have my reservations too, I think its not that bad, the problem might have been blown up to proportions since people can complain about even the slightest/minor problems when they have invested so much. Just like you, I have the tendency to buy it too, but since I have just bought mine not long ago, maybe I can put this on hold unless the new PSP-3000 can go rock bottom until about RM650, I will snap one right away! But its that the pixel arrangement is now 90 degrees compared to normal, problably in the old PSP-2000 if you have a game scrolling top down instead of left right you might be able to see such video problem too. Another difference I noticed in the picture of the pixel arrangements, is that the old PSP-2000 have R-G-B subpixel arrangement while the new PSP-3000 have R-B-G arrangement. Any games utilizing the sub-pixel as some way to do anti-aliasing (just like microsoft window's ClearType) it will appear horrible unless the game recognizes the difference between R-G-B and R-B-G arrangements and render the screen correctly. Just my 2 cents!

Generally, the UMD official format is about 1.7Gb. Therefore, you can safely assume that there will be no games bigger than that, given there will be no games utilizing more than a single UMD. To me, the file size can be a general indicator of the game content, bigger size equal more content such as movie cutscenes, music files, and such. Therefore, you can see good games such as Tekken and Final Fantasy: Crisis Core consume the entire UMD disc. There is simply too much content, i think they even have to reduce the content during development to fit the game into the disc. If you have played Crisis Core, i think you would see the reason for the repetitive environments for all the side missions.

But sometimes, the file size could be big because the disc contains redundant data for multiple languages, such as NFS: Undercover. Although the disc utilizes more than 1Gb, but the game also contains contents for 5 languages at the same time, meaning the actual game is only a fraction of the size. Removing the contents for the other languages besides english, the game can be shrunk to about 390Mb with compression without losing any content.

On the extreme side, sometimes you can remove the multimedia contents such as cutscenes and musics that you don't need to further reduce the size of the game. Compression also helps to reduce size of games, but might cause lag in some games later on such as GTA series. Syphon Filter:Logan's Shadow can be reduced to about 30Mb, leaving you only with the online aspect of the game, the single player mode, cutscenes, music and voices totally removed.

As azaman stated out, the general rule is correct, most official games are about 600Mb, but can be as small as 300Mb (early day PSP games). Most games developed later are much larger, offering more content and entertainment.

The 600Mb rule of thumb can be very subjective, but it worked out for me. Just that some games are already compressed when they're released, further compression will not help much. With the size of the original game image and the compression ratio managed to achieved lately, i think games are getting harder to compress, signs of UMD format reaching its limits. As a Final Fantasy fan, i really think that Crisis Core would be a much better game if they have more than 1.7Gb to play around with. And those programmers are really good, the UMD version shows no signs of lagging and gameplay is very smooth, equaling the speed you would achieve with a fake memory card, just that i don't like the buzzing sound of the UMD disc when i'm playing in a silent environment.

Yes it is, released in 23rd April 2007. There is even a review at IGN: 7 Wonders Review

You can always check out for reviews at Gamespot or at IGN. But don't trust their review so much, sometimes they tend to be very biased. Just use it to view some screenshots of the game and decide whether to get the game or not. Sometimes i think the reader's comment are more helpful.

Football manager is generally a football management/simulation game. It can be very boring to some players because all you see in the game is just tables, charts and just some 2d football field. You are to manage a football team as manager overseeing the team training, player transfer, squad selection, wages and more. I don't actually play Football Manager series, but I do play the football manager mode in Fifa2009. Its very addictive I tell you, sometimes I spend my weekend going through one premier league season. One thing I like about this Fifa2009 is that, even in manager mode, when sometimes got match that you feel is important to win or you just feel like playing instead of managing, you can actually jump into the game and play the normal kick-off mode. So basically you're playing 2 games in 1. That's me, I'm not sure how other people feel about the game, but I really feel the game is very good, might find a chance to buy a real UMD disc to thank EA for their efforts

Being a slow react player myself, I do agree that sometimes games that require reflexes can be quite frustrating, but give it a try anyway, playing a game is not about winning sometimes, its about spending some quality time with your PSP and getting some satisfaction out of it, unless your satisfaction comes from winning the game more than playing the game, you really have to play more slow paced game (like turn-based ones)

That's odd. The last time I installed it for a friend with custom firmware 5.00 M33 and it works. Just that as usual, it can't handle graphic intensive PDFs such as mangas and comic books. Otherwise, it works flawlessly. The custom firmware is the earliest version 5.00 M33, not the latest 5.00 M33-4. Maybe you should give it a try again.

Apparently Photofast CR-5400 adaptors can be bought cheap at ebay. Just got mine at RM42 with shipping. Some info for those planning to buy the adaptor.

Mine used to have that problem. Apparently the pin on the PSP doesn't have a good connection to the charger adaptor. You have to give the adaptor a nudge just to get it up and charging. I simply took a ballpoint pen and force the pin inside the PSP charging hole to bend a little, so now it have a tight fit whenever the charger adaptor is plugged in. Works fine until now, but don't bend too hard, you might accidentally break the pin.

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Added on December 28, 2008, 12:44 amIf I'm not mistaken, the latest CFW is just 5.01 M33-4, not 5.02 unless you're talking about OFW. Once you go version 5.00 and above, you will have the access to the playstation store. But if you're playing some of your games midway though, I would suggest you holding out and finish those games first, as some game's savegames won't work after you changed your firmware version. Not all game's savegame are firmware sensitive, but some are.

This post has been edited by kaiyi: Dec 28 2008, 12:44 AM

Haha, another reminder, thats what everyone thought when the TA088v3 motherboard was not hackable. Until today, the status is still the same. Therefore, there might be a chance that the PSP3000 will not see the light of the day for CFW just like TA088v3 motherboards.