As an intro, the Playstation Portable or PSP as I will refer to it in this article is one of the best handheld multimedia platforms on the market today. The PSP was originally built by Sony in late 2004 but has since undergone many changes and developments. So the name PSP obviously comes from Playstation portable. The Playstation series is another game and now multimedia system that is built to run on a television rather than be portable. The first Playstation's were built solely as a gaming console but has evolved into the most advanced multimedia system mass made. The PSP is a simplified version of that. The basic features of the PSP are gaming, video and mp3 playback, along with internet connectivity. Each of these features will be discussed in much greater detail further along in the article.

Gaming is what the PSP was originally made for and pretty much all the first models could do. The PSP is equipped with a UMD drive which is how most games on it are played. The UMD drive is a disc drive that was invented by Sony exclusively for the PSP. These discs are small, about1/3 the size of a normal CD or DVD and hold up to 1.8 gigabytes of data. There are hundreds of games to be played on the PSP through UMD alone but with a recent software update, the Playstation store has been added to the PSP which makes it possible to download games directly from the PSP to a memory stick using a wifi connection. UMD games can be priced anywhere from 40 dollars for the new big name ones such as Madden or NBA, to as little as 10 dollars once they have been out for a while. Now as mentioned before, the PSP is able to use wifi for internet connectivity. This enables multiplayer online gaming. One of the most popular games for this is Socom U.S. Navy Seals: Fireteam Bravo 2. This game is based around playing as either the Seals or the terrorists and having to kill your opponent to win. One of the great things about this game is that you can use a microphone to talk to your teammates and strategy while in the game. On the PSP-1000 and 2000, a separate microphone must be bought but with the new PSP-3000, there is a built in one at the bottom of the front face.

One of the PSP's most advanced and useful features is the ability to hook up to a wireless network (wi-fi) and be able to surf the web along with a number of other things. The web browser for the PSP is quite useful but I must warn that it can be quite slow to load pages if you are not on a good wi-fi connection. If you go to a site that has a mobile feature then that is usually what will load when on the PSP and you may not be able to access everything you wanted so be warned. Another great feature of using wi-fi on the PSP is Skype. Skype is one of the most popular internet calling programs for the computer, allowing you to place voice and video calls to other Skype users and even land and cell lines if you buy credit. Calls to other users are available on the PSP but it again requires a microphone so if you only have a PSP-1000 or 2000, you may not be able to use it. Skype is rather limited on the PSP as you cannot chat as you would normally but you can make Skypeout calls to land and cell lines if you already bought credit from your computer.Skype for the PSP generally loads fast which is great. A recent addition to the PSP's use of wi-fi is the Playstation Store. To use the Playstation store, you must have a Playstation Network account which can be made straight from the PSP without the need of a computer. From the Playstation store, you can download games which cost money along with other free things such as game trailers onto your memory stick.

The video and mp3 playback features are really what turn the PSP from a portable gaming device into a hand held media system. First we'll discuss video playback. There are basically two ways to watch videos on a PSP. The first is through UMD. With the UMD, you can purchase episodes and seasons of your favorite shows along with movies and watch them from a disc. The problem with this often though is that the UMD is not large enough for the whole video or series of videos and you have to change out the disc every now and then. However I am not saying that the UMD is a bad way to watch videos on the PSP as it is often good to have a physical copy of the video that you cannot conventionally change by accident or have it get erased. This leads us to the next way to watch videos on the PSP and that is through a memory stick. With a memory stick, you take the file of a movie or any video from your computer, copy it to the memory stick, put it in the PSP an you can watch. The only type of video file that can be read on the PSP however is mp4 which can sometimes be a hassle if the video is not already in that format and you have to convert it. However the bonus of memory sticks is that they can hold much more than UMD's. Memory sticks range anywhere from a few hundred megabytes to many gigabytes. Now for mp3 playback, you can really only use a memory stick and store your mp3 files on there. However there is another way of listening to music on the PSP if you have wi-fi and that is through Internet Radio. If you go to the Internet Radio tab under Network in the Cross Media Bar you can listen to all different kind s of music.

The PSP Go is the newest and updated form of the PSP. With the Go, there have been many changes made from the PSP-1000, 2000, and 3000. The first and most notable of these changes is the completely new look. Instead of having one unmoving face with the screen in the middle and buttons off to the sides, the Go has two sliding front faces where the buttons are on the bottom of the face further away and are covered up when the screen on the front part slides down. This PSP is 16% lighter than the PSP-3000 and 35% smaller. Another very noticeable change is the lack of a UMD drive. These discs have been scrapped for 16 gigabytes of internal memory which games can be downloaded to from the Playstation Store. There is also a port for a memory stick which will allow for extra memory. The PSP Go is scheduled for release October 1, 2009