3rd November 2016, 8:57 PM
The PS3 store used to resemble the PSP store a lot more.
Do I agree with you about wired internet being faster? Well, I mean it's not even up for discussion. The specs are easily available and it's simply a fact. Even AC, at it's highest theoretical speed, reaches only 780 Mb a second, vs ethernet's 1 Gb (that's the standard right now, although 10 Gb does exist, it hasn't really been widely accepted yet). AD does allow up to 6 Gb, but it can't go through average walls very easily, if at all, and isn't a good replacement for AC. In practice, most devices still use either N or even G, and so they don't even approach the 1 Gb speeds. Most modern routers have a combination of either N or maybe AC and multiple gig ports. Almost nothing these days still uses a 100 Mb ethernet port (the Wii and Wii U are exceptions, but those devices also use G instead of AC, and G is still slower than 100 Mb connections).
That's not even the half of it. Even if AD were a good fit (as in a large open office space with few to no walls), there's the matter of reliability. Wireless simply isn't as reliable as a solid wired connection, and it likely never will be. There's just too many variables in a wireless connection which are all absent from a wired connection. There's also the matter of latency, and between SSID and security negotiating as well as the aforementioned reliability issues, all but those locations almost next to the access point are going to show both latency and speeds lower than the device's listed maximum.
That's not to mention basic security, as a wired connection won't have people listening in like a wifi connection can (even if secured, that data is still going over the air where a cable wouldn't).
This whole time I've badmouthed wifi quit a bit, but I do want to be clear that it has one overwhelming advantage, and that's for portable devices. I would never tether my laptop to an ethernet connection if I could avoid it, and I've never missed having such a port on any of my handheld devices, because it would hinder the main point of those things. Wifi is reliable enough to be usable and fast enough that I generally don't feel the need to download something at my computer and then copy it over (any more, as many older devices used B style connections). However, for online gaming or for truly truly truly outrageous download sizes (like modern computer games), I will stick with stationary wired connection. My recommendation is that if you CAN get a wire over to your stationary devices, do so, and you'll have a much better connection to show for it.
I do have the first model PS3 (with the PS2 chipset and everything), and it does have those flash memory ports. I even tossed a few old unused memory cards of each type in those slots just because I wasn't using them for anything else. In short, the memory isn't locked off when a hard drive is installed (to be clear, all but the latest cheapest model PS3 had a hard drive installed out of the box), but games can't actually "see" those cards. While you can store saved game files on any of them, it would be pretty inconvenient as you'd need to move it back to the hard drive for the game to do anything with it. Further, unlike the model you have, if the hard drive is removed entirely then the system won't even boot up correctly, since so much of the OS is stored on the hard drive. That internal flash was put in your model purely as a way to allow them the possibility of selling the system without a hard drive.
I've got the S revision, and you're right, it was 4 GB rather than 8 GB. For my part, the moment the 360 was updated with the option, I usually installed any game I was playing entirely to the hard drive anyway, just to avoid load times. The flash memory would of course reduce them further. One big issue with the 360 is the lack of official support for using whatever hard drive you want. That's one area where Sony comes out ahead, at least. With the PS3, if you want to store your games in flash, you can buy an internal flash hard drive. They've got some pretty nice ones now, though the cost per gig is going to be higher so a 1 TB drive is going to be out of your price range I'd imagine. Technically, one can do that with the 360, but MS sure makes it hard. For one, special 3rd party formatting programs will be needed, and for two there's that really annoying drive bay that is shaped to only really fit MS's own proprietary drives. While other SATA drives CAN fit, they sit pretty loose and could come unplugged pretty easily. One could cut open the little black box MS's drives come in and swap in their own drive into that box to solve that problem, but it's rather annoying that MS makes people hop through all those hoops. Well, there's always just using a USB flash drive. USB 2.0 is technically faster than the SATA connection used internally on the 360, but in practice most USB 2 ports don't actually come close to that maximum so a SATA connection still ends up a bit more reliably fast in the long run.
Do I agree with you about wired internet being faster? Well, I mean it's not even up for discussion. The specs are easily available and it's simply a fact. Even AC, at it's highest theoretical speed, reaches only 780 Mb a second, vs ethernet's 1 Gb (that's the standard right now, although 10 Gb does exist, it hasn't really been widely accepted yet). AD does allow up to 6 Gb, but it can't go through average walls very easily, if at all, and isn't a good replacement for AC. In practice, most devices still use either N or even G, and so they don't even approach the 1 Gb speeds. Most modern routers have a combination of either N or maybe AC and multiple gig ports. Almost nothing these days still uses a 100 Mb ethernet port (the Wii and Wii U are exceptions, but those devices also use G instead of AC, and G is still slower than 100 Mb connections).
That's not even the half of it. Even if AD were a good fit (as in a large open office space with few to no walls), there's the matter of reliability. Wireless simply isn't as reliable as a solid wired connection, and it likely never will be. There's just too many variables in a wireless connection which are all absent from a wired connection. There's also the matter of latency, and between SSID and security negotiating as well as the aforementioned reliability issues, all but those locations almost next to the access point are going to show both latency and speeds lower than the device's listed maximum.
That's not to mention basic security, as a wired connection won't have people listening in like a wifi connection can (even if secured, that data is still going over the air where a cable wouldn't).
This whole time I've badmouthed wifi quit a bit, but I do want to be clear that it has one overwhelming advantage, and that's for portable devices. I would never tether my laptop to an ethernet connection if I could avoid it, and I've never missed having such a port on any of my handheld devices, because it would hinder the main point of those things. Wifi is reliable enough to be usable and fast enough that I generally don't feel the need to download something at my computer and then copy it over (any more, as many older devices used B style connections). However, for online gaming or for truly truly truly outrageous download sizes (like modern computer games), I will stick with stationary wired connection. My recommendation is that if you CAN get a wire over to your stationary devices, do so, and you'll have a much better connection to show for it.
I do have the first model PS3 (with the PS2 chipset and everything), and it does have those flash memory ports. I even tossed a few old unused memory cards of each type in those slots just because I wasn't using them for anything else. In short, the memory isn't locked off when a hard drive is installed (to be clear, all but the latest cheapest model PS3 had a hard drive installed out of the box), but games can't actually "see" those cards. While you can store saved game files on any of them, it would be pretty inconvenient as you'd need to move it back to the hard drive for the game to do anything with it. Further, unlike the model you have, if the hard drive is removed entirely then the system won't even boot up correctly, since so much of the OS is stored on the hard drive. That internal flash was put in your model purely as a way to allow them the possibility of selling the system without a hard drive.
I've got the S revision, and you're right, it was 4 GB rather than 8 GB. For my part, the moment the 360 was updated with the option, I usually installed any game I was playing entirely to the hard drive anyway, just to avoid load times. The flash memory would of course reduce them further. One big issue with the 360 is the lack of official support for using whatever hard drive you want. That's one area where Sony comes out ahead, at least. With the PS3, if you want to store your games in flash, you can buy an internal flash hard drive. They've got some pretty nice ones now, though the cost per gig is going to be higher so a 1 TB drive is going to be out of your price range I'd imagine. Technically, one can do that with the 360, but MS sure makes it hard. For one, special 3rd party formatting programs will be needed, and for two there's that really annoying drive bay that is shaped to only really fit MS's own proprietary drives. While other SATA drives CAN fit, they sit pretty loose and could come unplugged pretty easily. One could cut open the little black box MS's drives come in and swap in their own drive into that box to solve that problem, but it's rather annoying that MS makes people hop through all those hoops. Well, there's always just using a USB flash drive. USB 2.0 is technically faster than the SATA connection used internally on the 360, but in practice most USB 2 ports don't actually come close to that maximum so a SATA connection still ends up a bit more reliably fast in the long run.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)