Anyone else thought at some point that this new iteration has one strange problem: it seems to be built for dedicated pirates.

Of course, the battery is set up to void your warranty if you do anything to it, but the whole pandora battery thing, as useful as it obviously was in helping you install custom firmware, it's not like that was the only ever way to install custom firmware, and besides, a warranty sticker on the battery won't stop someone from using a battery trick to hack a PSP Go if the process is documented well enough.

Anyway, I've had a phat psp since launch, a slim since launch, skipped out on the 3000 series since it was too similar to the slim, and the largest memory stick I've had has been 4GB, and 1GB before that. I can imagine having a whole 16GB built in to the thing would be a hell of a reason to buy a PSP Go if it supported custom FW. I know it would certainly be nice to be able to have my entire PS1 library on my PSP, which if I'm not mistaken is/was only possible using custom FW or if Sony offers every single one for digital distribution. The PSP makes an EXTREMELY good GBA too, plus the buttons are basically an SNES controller right there.

Anyway, with all the strange design choices Sony has made with the PSP Go, maybe it was all to appeal to or get more cash from casual scriptmonkey dedicated pirates as soon as the inevitable custom FW hack surfaces? For instance:

1. No UMD drive: pirates never use this anyway, so save on the cost of the possibly most expensive part of the PSP, the mechanical disc reader.
2. LARGE internal storage: more space for all the games that have until now been filling up a memory stick
3. a whole new suite of cables/accessories to buy: This is where Sony can get some money from otherwise cheapskates: proprietary hardware! Gotta have that component cable, hate the stupid look of the "old accessory" dock. Gotta get that sixaxis since I don't have a PS3 just to use for the PSP. New expensive non-standard USB cable means more money spent on Sony hardware when I lose it or break it.

and finally... 4. DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION!: What many might not realize is that digital distribution can possibly keep someone from pirating. Why wait for a fix to be released for that mininova ISO if it's just waiting to be bought and downloaded IMMEDIATELY without the need to swap UMD discs? Why wait till I get home to download off the pirate bay when I can crack open my psp here on the toilet at school and get the game right now, legitimately? Also, I can see the argument from a non-pirate that "hey I gotta go to gamestop to buy the new monster hunter, but why don't I download it in the meantime since I'm gonna be ripping it anyway..." and then just forget to go to gamestop or feel stupid going to gamestop and buying it after you find out it sucks or you're almost done beating it anyway.

In a similar vein, I can attest how much Steam convinces me to buy more games digitally even when I could just as easily pirate them to see what they're like. I must have redownloaded Left 4 Dead about 10 times in the past month just because I like to keep some more free space on my 80GB SSD, knowing that it's easy as crap to redownload whenever I wanna kill some zombies. Popcap games must be the easiest games to pirate in the history of PC games but I still preordered the CRAP out of PLANTS VS ZOMBIES just so I knew I could play it as soon as possible and redownload it on every machine I own, easily and quickly. I haven't played it for a while but I get supreme satisfaction just redownloading it and remembering how awesome it is. Same thing for Defense Grid, easy as pie to pirate but I knew I'd love it from the moment I heard about it, had it not been for Steam I wouldn't have bought it just because I didn't feel like trying to find it in a store. Is it even available on store shelves?!

I've heard horror stories about buying from the lenovo outlet or trying to finagle your way into a return without a restocking fee or something, but I just got done having two unparalleled experiences with them. Bought a refurbished t400 and a refurbished x200 tablet and they are both exceptional, especially when considering how much I paid for them.

Also, although I know several have mentioned many similar things about thinkpads above, first of all the t400 is a great standard laptop. I got mine with a 2.26 ghz dual core, dvd+r dl ultrabay burner, switchable graphics (ati 3470 and intel 4500hd, the intel i assume has acceptable linux support and the switchable graphics work great in windows 7 RTM), 1440x900 LED backlit 300 nit LG matte screen, 9 cell battery for over 7 hours of battery life in power saving mode, a full copy of office '07 and vista business 32 which is eligible for a free W7 Pro upgrade on october 23 all for a total of $660 including tax. This is a steal for the quality of laptop I got. I configured it with the same options as new from their website with heavy coupon usage and it came out to 1000-1100.

There are several reasons why the thinkpad has basically survived all sorts of comparisons to other laptops since I bought it:
1. every thinkpad comes with a trackpoint/ultranav, which aside from being rare on a laptop these days is (if I researched correctly) a trackpoint 4th generation with many improvements over the few competing brands. This is extremely obvious when comparing to the "pointing stick" on a year old dell latitude. Also, I'm not sure but I think other trackpoints may not have the second set of mouse buttons right above the trackpad like thinkpads do. Again, the Dell Latitude I can compare it to does NOT. The middle ultranav button is particularly useful with the ultranav software, turning it into a trackpoint scroll.

2. While my 300-nit LED screen is certainly bright enough to make the keyboard visible in the dark, negating the use of the nice thinklight, it is still nice to have for when you want a light to read some paper documents or read a real book. Also, by using the thinklight to illuminate the keyboard, you can save battery life by reducing screen brightness. I have no idea how to compare to a backlit keyboard in terms of battery life, but I assume it is much less since I've read of troubles involving NOT using the keyboard backlight when it is not necessary.

3.The ultrabay slot I'm sure is a feature on other business laptops, I was actually looking at a fujitsu lifebook and read about its modular bay. Of course, that is a $1800 tablet so let's just say when you can buy an hdd adapter off ebay from hong kong for $15 making the use of two HDDs in a 660 dollar laptop that's pretty incomparable right there. Unfortunately the ultrabay battery apparently dies real quick since it is depleted completely before the main battery so I doubt I'll ever get one of those to have an equivalent of a 12 cell battery in my thinkpad.

4. I'm not sure how ubiquitous this is nowadays, but the latest thinkpads all support sata II 3.0 gbps in the main bay. Right now sitting pretty is an intel SSD at full speed, and a standard 160GB HDD in the ultrabay slot, giving the best of both SSD/HDD worlds.

5. Battery life is great, easily less than 10000(10?) MW when in power saver/intel graphics, giving me 8 hours of battery life on the 80000(80?) MWh refurb 9 cell that came with. Plus, 4 cell batts that sit flush in the t400 to fit my incase 15" macbook fluffy sleeve are $35 on the outlet. 6 cells (sticking out less than 9 cell) are $41 and I don't know how much 9 cells are since mine came with one.

6. the ATI 3470, while obviously not a champion graphics card, plays every game I throw at it except maybe Crysis. I have a quad core desktop if I want supreme graphics anyway. A bonus is that the t400 is one of the few real "lap"tops out there, since even when gaming it doesnt burn my lap like basically every other "notebook" out there. Left 4 Dead runs great which means L4D2 should be great, and COD MW runs appreciably well too so MW2 should be acceptable. Starcraft 2 should be no real biggie either since Warhammer DoW2 is more than playable. Do I need anything else?

7. This is a big "what if" but I do know there is an "advanced dock" available in the lenovo outlet for $150 that actually gives you a pci express lane (capped at 1x) to fool around with, and yes it supports graphics cards. Now it has its limitations so who knows what would run in it but I have dreams that I'd be able to stick a ATI HD4650 in there, since I've read this thing called a DIY ViDock that plugs a graphics card into your expresscard slot, which is also limited at 1x pcie, but still manages to play RE5 at 30 FPS.

Anyways I'm sure there's other things I could say about the t400 but I'll stop there. The great thing about the lenovo outlet is that in addition to their cheap prices, if you check thinkwiki and lenovo parts lookup and the tabook, you can get specs on the entire laptop you'll be getting, so that's basically how I KNEW what screen I was getting beforehand. The kicker? It's relatively hard to do this and the information given to every average joe browsing the outlet is barely detailed, so you have little to no competition getting good deals on this stuff.

Like, lets take for example the new x200 tablet I got too at a sharp discount from its configured $1600-$1900 price for a new one. There were two of these tablets on there for a similar price point. By applying my "magic" skills I guaranteed that even though there was no official word on what came with the configuration, it had the preferable screen. It ALSO happened to come with a $150 ultrabase (docking station) since thats what the model as configured came with to begin with. Of course there was a chance that it didn't come with that ultrabase, that they found some other use for it, but alas they included it and all is well.

By the way, since I mentioned it, the x200 tablet is amazing too. It's smaller than the t400 with just as good of a screen and internal parts, a touch screen and convertible tablet aesthetic (except for the discrete graphics). Although it sucks that the ultrabay isnt in the unit itself, plugging in the ultrabase gets you a standard ultrabay slot to satisfy your modular bay needs.