For those of you who don’t know David Carnoy – he is
a tech reviewer for CNET. Now, I don’t know his exact affiliation
or role but he writes good, unbiased reviews, so I follow pretty
much what he says about most things. I keep ice-cream reviews to
myself!
I was interested therefore, in his recent hate lists on Xbox and
PS3. Whilst these lists do not purport to be a complete review of
the products in all criteria [design, features, performance, product
integrity], the following lists stand on their own merits
Xbox 360
The Color – as Carnoy says, “white
bread” beige is not a cool color.
Lack of killer games at launch
Overpriced Accessories - if its not bad enough
that features are lacking as standard, and require purchase of
accessories; extra wireless controllers, rechargeable battery
kit, and faceplates are well overpriced.
20GB Hard-drive is too small– Seems
MS uses a laptop drive instead of a standard desktop hard drive
to keep the Xbox 360 size down. More acceptable 60GB or 100GB
would make this unit a true high-def media server.
Limited keyboard/mouse support at launch –
and no indication from MS when this will be added for use in actual
games
No built-in Wi-Fi – wouldn’t be
so bad if there were a few more USB ports where a USB Wi-Fi adapter
could plug in.
Limited 3 USB Ports - 1 USB port on the back;
two USB ports on the front for the upcoming video camera and a
second wired controller.
No HDMI or DVI connectivity – albeit
a HD-DVD or Blu-ray drive would have rocked, but there is not
even an upconverting DVD player to fake out HD via an HDMI or
a DVI connection. Such digital connections are an accepted standard
on HDTVs, and the PS3 will allegedly offer two built-in HDMI ports.
No built-in card reader – that means
no saving games or displaying content (photos, video, music) from
a standard flash-memory card, Instead you need to buy another
accessory - proprietary 64MB memory card for $40. NOTE: the 360
premium bundle, includes a hard drive so this isn’t necessay].
In comparison, Sony's PS3 has a built-in card reader that supports
CompactFlash and SD/MMC in addition to Sony's own Memory Stick
format.
Poor market supply – poor planning or
controlled demand to maintain pricing? Who knows with MS!
PSP
NOTE: CNET awarded PSPs the Editors Choice award; stating it
is “hands down, the best portable gaming system we've seen”.
No alarm clock – with both clock and
MP3 player onboard, it seems an alarm wouldn’t be out of
the expectation of feature set.
UMD volume discrimination – Standard
volume is pretty average and
can only be boosted for movies and games; not MP3s or your own
video stored on a Memory Stick Duo card.
No background screen customization –
current changes color to Sony specs each month.
No e-book reader or audiobook support. You
could try hacking an e-book into separate JPEG images and use
PSP's slide-show feature to read it; but with ebooks rocketing
in popularity; you shouldn’t have to.
No video out for TV hookup – a real standard
feature missed out.
Poor Image-viewing application - adequate but
very limited.
No PIM capability – already being addressed
by third-party developers. A good indication of consumer demand,
omitted by Sony.
No Web browser - Has built-in Wi-Fi but, no
Web browser. Go figure! Supposedly Sony are aiming to add this
shortly, maybe when they increase compatibility by adding support
for WPA-encrypted networks. Almost seems like it’s a basic
left out in haste of launch.
No file management software – a keen
feature for managing MP3 files, but Sonys best attempt in the
PS3 is a simple scroll through the whole list.
Video complications – sounds distinctly
similar to comments about Sonys camcorders.
Why is it Sony devices are so user unfriendly? Arrogance or ignorance?
If Sony intended the PS3 just to be a gaming machine, fine. But
as a media center it is seriously lacking. And that includes software
compatibility for format conversion and ability to synch video,
audio, and image files to the PSP.
Overall, the PS3 is certainly not as Sony is billing as "the
Walkman of the 21st century"
