Monday, February 12, 2007

business travel and ways to waste time

Over and over again, I keep supressing the urge to buy a sony psp. Here it is at the Costco website. I realized that I need something to distract me while on long flights or sitting in the hotel room at night.

Pulling the laptop out of the briefcase, waiting for it to boot up and do and hour or two of work never seems possible on the airplane. Not enough space -- too tiring -- i fall asleep -- more excuses than you can imagine.

Big Company doesn't want me loading software on their precious laptop, so can't play games on it. Don't want to rent video games from the hotel at $9 per hour. What's one to do? Should I carry a second laptop around -- not a good idea.

But a SONY PSP is small. Maybe it would be fun? Anyone have any experience or advice? Is this a waste of nearly $300?

Regards, makingourway

4 comments:

Unknown said...

A friend of mine bought a PSP for that very reason - travel entertainment. He loves it! I was surprised at how close the games' functionality works to the boxed playstations. The graphics, gameplay, sound, etc. are almost identical to that of a PS2. You can also watch movies, but not every day DVDs (yet). They have proprietary licensed movies on PSP-specific media.

If you are doing much traveling I recommend it. Save up some cash and invest in one...you won't be disappointed with the performance.

makingourway said...

thanks, mission, I'm glad to hear it makes sense to others as well.
The cosco package includes a media converter - not sure if it would convert a regular consumer DVD, but it would be nice.

it is a shame the psp games are so expensive - any ideas on how to buy them cheaply?

regards, makingourway

MB said...

I have a gameboy advance that my parents bought me for Christmas a couple of years ago (I was 22.) It's gotten me through several long flights, and like my iPod (which I NEVER leave home without) has been well worth the investment based on the length and amount of joy it has brought me.

When I was heading out for three months in China last summer, I bought myself a new (used) copy of pokeman. I felt a little silly playing a children's game, but 22 insomniac hours on an airplane later, I was grateful for any distraction.

I say, save up and go for it. I used the same sort of logic when I decided to buy an ipod. I listen to audio books on my half-hour each way commute every day and listen to music for most of the day at work which helps me through the boring research days. I figured that by the end of the first year, the cost of the iPod was down to about $.50 per hour of use and will only fall further as time goes on.

Anonymous said...

I've been thinking about the same thinking - although focusing on the Creative Zen W Media Player. I have several trips to China coming up and thinking it sure would be nice on the trips.

However, Im probably going to hold off - not sure it really allows me to do anything I can't on my laptop already (with airplane charger).