You Sold Your PS3 Because of the PSN Outage?

In one of my recent posts, I commented on the PlayStation Network coming back online and the (rightful) outrage over the outage. Well, about that time I started hearing rumors about people who sold their PS3 while the PSN was down. With the PSN coming back online (albeit slowly), those same people are now kicking themselves.

But, seriously? To those out there who were seemingly driven to sell their “useless” PS3s, did you think the PlayStation Network would be down forever?

No real offense intended here, but you must have the patience level of a four-year-old who missed several naps.

I’m just as happy with my PS3, with or without the PSN. I can still play my games, and I can still get Netflix. Remember a time when there was no PSN, and gaming was done solely with those sitting in your own livingroom? Maybe while the PSN was down, the impulse sellers should have gotten back in touch with those days.

No one is separating me from my PS3.

PSN Up and Running Again

For any of you that have thrown your hands up in disgust after the fiftieth login failure when trying to access your PSN account, I can confirm that the PlayStation Network is functional again. When you try to login, you will be told that there is a system update available. This update will (hopefully) plug the gaping holes in Sony's security and ensure that you're asked to change your password on the next login attempt.

According to an article by Erica Ogg on CNET's news site, the service had to be reset again when Sony received too many password change requests at once, and the queue locked up. Everything worked ok for me when I tried to change my password, so I guess everything's back to normal again.

Does this erase the last four weeks? Absolutely not. But, also according to Erica Ogg's article, Sony is promising a free game download (for keeps) to help smooth things over with their (rightfully) angry customers.

Again, does this erase the fact that I and several million of my fellow users had their names, addresses, birthdates, and more stolen from Sony's servers? Not a chance. However, I will admit that this gesture, plus offering free credit monitoring to all users who were affected, is a good place to start.

Fortunately, I never had any credit card information stored on my profile, for this very possibility, and I already have credit monitoring anyways (as anyone who spends a lot of time on the Web should). So, I'm not too worried about my own data. But, I think other people should be, and while I still love my PS3, I hope that Sony doesn't think a free game, a free movie rental, and free credit monitoring will make us forget that this ever happened.

Tablets - Fad or Future?

Even as a self-proclaimed “techie”, I have to admit, I’ve been slow to get on the tablet PC bandwagon.  I yawned when the Kindle and Nook e-readers took the stage, and I felt little more than disinterest when the iPad was first announced.

Advanced Warning: My apologies to any die-hard Apple fans out there, but I’m an equally die hard PC fan. I hate touch screens, so I’ll never own an iPhone, and my Sony Walkman makes me happier than any iPod will. So, just to let you know now, Apple will not get any love from me on this blog, and I’ll get in my digs against them when given the opportunity.

Back to my point - I know that a lot of people were falling all over themselves to pick up a Maxi iPad (I’ll try to keep my derision over the product name to a minimum here), but I just didn’t see the point. Predictably, there were complaints about the touchpad keyboard being bad for typing email and that movie watching was made no easier than watching it on a laptop.

To me, the tablet PC isn’t much more than a glorified Kindle. (For the record, I don’t own one of those either, although I understand its usefulness for avid readers who are also avid travelers, and no, I’m not afraid it will eventually replace books, because it won’t.) I think a tablet PC is useful to supplement a desktop PC or laptop PC, because they make surfing the internet a little more portable than a laptop and little more readable than surfing via your phone.

As long as you don’t need to type anything and clicking is kept to a minimum, I think a tablet PC is a good supplemental tool. It could even be a purchase in my future. But, I don’t think tablets will ever replace anything, except perhaps the e-reader. And, if I get one, it will probably be a Motorola Xoom or Google’s tablet, should they finally decide to release one.

An introduction –

I was eight years old when the video game bug bit into me. That was when I first played Super Mario Bros. by Nintendo. I had flirted with video games before then – there was a Star Wars arcade game at my childhood grocery store that I loved to watch people play when I was even younger, but I was too small to really get the hang of the controls, or even reach them.

A couple years later, I was making Mario bounce around on the screen. That’s when I knew I’d found “my thing”. I followed up Mario with others, and tore through Nintendo and Atari games alike – Top Gun, Duck Hunt, Pitfall, Joust. When the NES was supplemented with the Super NES and the Sega Genesis, I loved them, too.

As I got older, that love of the video game machine evolved into a love of other electronic things: computers, stereos, sound systems, flat-screen TVs, whatever. I have a love of the gear, and the gear in my box just keeps multiplying.

This is my blog about gear.