No difference other than size of HD and no ps2 play. I have one, and have no remorse.

The new Dual Shock 3's are already shipping from Amazon (the controller alone, that is. It's anyone's guess when they'll start showing up in new consoles). You can pick up an 80 GB from Newegg.

Just bought an 80 myself. Don't have much to play on it yet, but the Uncharted demo is fun, and I'm downloading a bunch more demos. Remorse? Hard to say yet. I plan on using it as a blu-ray player, of course. The BC is nice, as I never owned a PS2, and I now have the option of getting into games I'd heard about but never played (of course, the 80 is the last model to feature BC at this point... Don't know about future models). I guess buyer's remorse depends entirely on whether or not the exclusives are worth it. Any cross-platform titles default to the 360 until there are actual gameplay advantages to the PS3 version (thanks, gamerscore). It's too early to say one way or the other, and having only had my PS3 since Tuesday of this week, I'm still enjoying the newness of it.

How is it limited? (honest question, not arguing with you)

A friend of mine has a launch 60. He hasn't used BC in a while, but he said it didn't work with the game he tried (SOCOM). I just assumed software patches had fixed those issues between now and then. It's not like I'm supporting a huge back-library of PS2 games, though. Do you know of a list of titles that don't work, just so I don't pick something up that won't work?

I was given a 40 GB as a present for Christmas. It was my first Playstation product. All I really wanted was a reliable piece of hardware for Rock Band, and maybe some other games along the way. So backwards compatibility is not an issue. I have enjoyed it, very much. I downloaded a few games, having Symphony of the Night on demand is great. I do not miss rumble, never liked the idea of holding two dildos, myself.

But if you are concerned about backwards compatibility. You may want to hold off and get one of the Metal Gear Solid bundles. Those will have MGS, a dual shock, and an 80GB model.

Thanks for all the input! Himmed and Hawwed for a little while and then gave in to my Consumer Whore Tendencies.
So far so good!
Blu-Ray looks amazing!
Also, I found out that writing a check for $600 does not fit my spending profile and that Best Buy will not accept payment if it does not match their 3rd parties 'Risk Profile.' Luckily I had available plastic.

You can use a hub.

Yeah, the lack of rear USB is a pain. I finally bit the bullet this past weekend and hooked my PS3 up to the big TV in the living room, since I play so few games on it (I usually keep consoles connected to the 20" LCD in the same room so that I can play while my wife watches TV).

It's a damned good media centre solution; bluray, upscaled DVDs, optical connection to 5.1 system and media server; the only problem is that if I want to watch my collection of .avi s without loss from the network (I find that it's fine for music, but a bit hit and miss for movies), I have to stick my portable HDD on the floor in front of the TV stand. Still, I can't have everything, and it beats building a media box.

At least I finally have a reason to turn the damned thing on; I have something like 50 360 games, 25 Wii games and only 6 PS3 games, a year after UK launch. nsmike is bang on about cross platform stuff being better on 360.

Many cross-platform games have struggled to match the 360 in terms of performance. Basically, because of how specialized the PS3 architecture is (while the 360 is a simple, general 3-core CPU architecture), the PS3 requires some special tender lovin' care to blossom into its full performance. Many times, it doesn't get this, and instead the game is just made to be "up and running".

For games that bend themselves a bit to exploit the unique nature of the PS3 hardware, there's some serious performance to be had. But that's not always something you can count on. There have been some truly substandard cross-platform games hitting the PS3.

From experience with the Amiga, which was a highly unique architecture that required special programming to exploit, most of the time, most ports aren't very good. But if you get games that are designed specifically for the system, they'll do things that other systems just can't.

That said, from what I've seen of them, I don't think the PS3 is enormously ahead of the 360 at their respective bests. I tend to think that the unique architecture is mostly drawback, rather than benefit, but your mileage may vary. There's an undeniable thrill in having an oddball system that's kinda mediocre a lot of the time, but will occasionally stand on its head, sing Ave Maria, and serve pancakes.

So you're waiting until June? I'm not going to wait. As soon as my sony card comes in I'm ordering a 40gb model (note that you get $100 off by using your sonystyle card to purchase a ps3 from sonystyle.com - you also get 12 mos no interest financing.) I just don't feel like waiting 2 months for the bundle.

PS3 for $25/month is really tempting.... I know that you need an HDMI connection to play encrypted blu-ray movies at 1080, does anyone know if that's a requirement to play them at 720? I have a cheapie 32" westinghouse LCD with a DVI connector instead of HDMI. I have a cable that can turn the HDMI connection into DVI, but I assume you lose the DRM features (HDCP) of the HDMI connection.

DVI-HDMI is bit perfect, it's just a physical change, so it doesn't break the HDCP chain. My HTPC connected to my RP CRT via a DVI-HDMI cable is HDCP-compliant (that was a fun sentence to type).

You don't need HDCP (or HDMI for the same reason) to play at 1080i if the ICT token isn't activated, which it hasn't been set on any Bluray disc to date.

Sony has the manufacturing down. I believe that they recently broke even on cost to produce and sale price. I bet the anticipated influx of Blu-Ray movie sales(of which they get a big cut of) will also tender them to drop the price, if only to get more players into the channel.

I more see them going with an aggressive bundling strategy. GTA IV is probably going to give them a big boost in the EU with that bundle. I don't doubt that if SOCOM makes it out this year, that we will see a bundle with that in the US. It would be really cool if they did it without the disc(as SOCOM will be sold digitally).