Wow, what a cool lunch! Smithy's review

There's a new guy in the office - "Nige" - and today he joined "B" and I for a yummy lunch at "Smithy's" (we really must find some new places to eat!), I went for the steak today, which was absolutely delicious, but swimming in herb butter (which is really very naughty!), it's not as bad as the steaks they serve up at Cafe Rouge for sheer amount of butter (that place actually makes me feel sick with the quantity of fat they expect you to merrily consume, I'm sure real french people don't eat that much! (or am I?)...

- anyway - the *real* bonus was the "Nige" had a really rather interesting suprise in his "sac magique" - an import Sony PSP (I'm sure they have much better pictures than my lame attempt)!! -

- here is one of the UMD disks -

- The unit itself was pretty heavy, weighing considerably more than the DS. I felt the controls were a little bit awkward (especially the odd sort of "sliding-style" analogue stick), but then I have pretty big hands (and the DS is no better), the display was a bit muted too compared to the bright colours the DS manages to kick out from it's twin screens (now that was very suprising and also a little dissapointing considering all the hype, which made it sound like a portable plasma quality unit) and unfortunately the only game "Nige" had was a sort of tetris clone that didn't really show off the power of the machine, so I am keeping my final judgements until I have played something that harnesses more of the power of the unit, "Metal Gear Acid" perhaps... ;) Video playback from the memory stick was about the same as on the C500 but it certainly makes a big difference having the nice large screen to watch them on. Anecdotally the battery lasts about 3 hours, which was the other big worry, I'm not sure that is quite long enough to be honest, but then, one charge would get you all the way through Lord of the Rings, so it's not *too* bad...fly to the States though and you are putting it back in your bag in a sulk before you are half way across the pond...hmmm...we shall see...