PSP Help....

Ok so I'm thinking of picking up the Daxter Psp pack and want to know, besides playing games and videos, what will I be able to do, out of the box with the PSP? I am pretty illiterate when it comes to computer/technical things, so looking at some PSP sites was a little over whelming. Can I surf online with it? How do i get music on there? Do I need a ton of extras to do all this? Any help or advice will be great.....

Out of the box?

Yep. You can put music and pictures on there. You can surf online if you have a wireless connection as well. To get the music on, you can either connect your PSP to your PC's USB port, or place the PSP's Memory card into a card reader on your PC.

It *should* come with everything you need for that. I'm pretty sure it does. Been awhile.

It comes with the usb cable to connect to your computer. You can just have your memory slot/card in the psp, connect the cable to your computer and drag & drop files on it.

It does have a memory slot card but is really small, cant remember if its 16mb or 32mb. You could transfer files straight to the card using a memory card reader but you will need your own memory card reader.

Surfing, just connect to a wireless network and you're good to go.

Wow, a lot of this needs clearing up. o.o

First off, the Daxter Pack does NOT come with a USB cable OR a Pro-Pro DUO adapter. However, the stick is 1GB, which is a nice size to start off with (though I'd say grab a 4GB - they're about $50 now). USB cables are easy enough to come by, and if you buy a larger memory stick Pro DUO, they usually come with a Pro adapter for use in a memory stick reader.

As for loading up files, first format the memory stick through the PSP's interface. It'll place all of the folders you need. Music goes into the MUSIC folder (MP3 support with WMA, after activation), pictures go into the PICTURE folder, and videos go into the VIDEO folder. Sadly, video support is limited. If I recall, AVI support was added a while ago, but I've yet to get it working. There are plenty of converters to get the video into mp4 format so that you can watch your favorite films (if it works on an iPod, it ought to work on PSP).

Folks have explained the wireless connection well enough.

Another feature, though not quite an "out of the box" thing, is the ability to run custom firmware. In case you were unsure, the PSP comes with an upgradeable operating system known as a firmware. Running a custom firmware allows you to run homebrew (unofficial) games, videos at maximum resolution (480x272), custom prx's (think something along the lines of a dll file for the PSP - they add extra features such as cheat engines, screen capturing...), and the ability to run backed up copies of games, though that last bit leads into some gray legal areas. There are also plenty of emulators available, most running at near-perfect speeds, but they also require the custom firmware to run.

The only problem is that the PSP in the Daxter Pack is a PSP-2000, otherwise known as a PSP Slim & Lite (PSP Slim for short), running the official firmware 3.60. The only way to install a custom firmware on this type of PSP is through a hacked battery that enables the PSP's service mode and then to use a special memory stick with the files required to run the installer.

I got just the vanilla PSP box like Tuesday, and I've had a blast with it.

Some things of note:

You do not get a memory card with a non-bundled PSP. I don't know if you'll get one in the Daxter pack. 4GB cards can be bought on Newegg for as little as $60.

http://www.pspvideo9.com/ <--quickly convert video in any format to PSP video. FWIW, a 23 minute TV show using the defaults came in at around 150MB.

The web surfing is the rox.

If you don't have a Memory Stick Duo Pro card reader, you need a mini-B USB cable. Sony's digital cameras that connect to PC's via USB have the same cable (I'm just using the cable that came with my CyberShot).

The screen is absolutely huge.

It plays MP3 audio as well as UNPROTECTED WMA audio.

There are some game demos on the psp.playstation.com website. The Warhammer 40k demo is really awesome. Download to your PC then copy to the card, or download using the web browser on the PSP.

Buy Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness. I'm going to start a thread dedicated to this game. If you like strat RPG's like Shining Force, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc. This is fantastic. I also picked up Jeanne D'Arc and gave it a couple hours Tuesday night. It's also very good, but I can see Disgaea taking over my life.

If you have a TV that displays progressive scan and has component-in Video, there's a $25 cable that lets you play games and show video/photos on your TV. If you have only composite video (there's also a cable for that which is only $20), or if your component video is interlaced on an SDTV, but only photos/video can be shown, no games.

Battery life is passable at around 5 hours. I started playing Disgaea at 1:30 yesterday afternoon, stopped for dinner around 5pm, and got another hour and a half before the power light started flashing at me.

I really like this system, and can hardly believe I bagged on it so badly previously.

One misconception in the previous post is that backups is not a legal gray area. It's flat illegal. Software piracy = not cool. I'd love to see how easy it is to hack the firmware, though, because I'd love an SNES emulator or Sega Genesis emulator. Kouri, do you have a link that goes into detail?

Any SNES or Genesis roms you put on there are "flat illegal" as well.

As far as how easy it is to mod one to custom firmware, it's gotten so simple and safe lately that anyone who can read and follow some short directions can do it. All it involves is putting some files on the memory card in the right location and running them.

On a side note, the web browser is absolutely horrible. It takes forever for stuff to load, the only worse portable browser is on the DS. Don't depend on this thing for internet access. Maybe they fixed it on the slim, I don't know.

Genesis and SNES games aren't being produced anymore, I don't see a problem with abandoned systems. Just because it's illegal doesn't mean I'm opposed to it. I just don't do it on currently shipping ones.

Battery life can be increased to 8-11 hours by using an original PSP battery, but it sticks out due to the larger size. Sony has promised a replacement cover to keep the classic battery in, but we've yet to see anything from them yet.

Actually, it all depends on the country. In the US, yes, everything associated with backups is illegal. In other countries, creating backups of your own games for personal use is not really an issue. I refer to the idea as a "gray area" because I generally don't bother checking each member's location before providing information.

Even still, a 3.60 Slim requires a Pandora battery created on a PSP already running a custom firmware, and a memory stick that's been formatted with the proper partitioning on either Windows XP SP2 or Linux. The memory stick shouldn't be much of an issue, but unless AJ's got a friend that's already "hacked" his own PSP, he won't have much luck unless he buys a prepared battery off of eBay or finds an online shop selling Datel's battery.

Give it time, the hackers will break that limitation too.

I actually wouldn't mind a battery sticking out but I don't like it exposed.

I'll check into the batteries...I'd like to try this out as it's the perfect emulation platform.