Makes sense!

For Sony, yes, but I'm wondering now just how many people would have gone and bought the new PS3 with the intention of using it for it's Linux capabilities, only now not to bother - it seems the PS3/Linux/Tinkerers brigade is quite sizable...

And Sony could do with the sales figures in the grand scheme of things

Not really, Sony make a loss on each one, but get money for the games that are sold - the linux tinkerers aren't really doing them any favours.

That said, the people who wanted them for linux to make use of the Cell for its grunt will have already bought one - a £50 drop in price would have made very little difference to them.

As it stands, the PS3 doesn't really have much RAM, making for a fairly poor desktop experience. There's still nothing stopping you running Folding@home on it though.

I was thinking along the lines of it's lower power consumption, bigger hard disk etc... I'd have thought it would have been very attractive as a one stop shop for those into their 'media and functionality' - the home iPod Touch in a sense

It is still that when you think about it - it still has a web browser, photo gallery, still plays mp3's, mp4's, divx, wma, CD's, DVD's, Blu-ray's. Plug a keyboard and mouse in and use google docs...
The hard disk is still upgradeable by the user so you can fill it with as many music tracks, video's or photo's as you can find.

Linux on the PS3 had its uses for things like Blender and raytracing apps, but with only 256mb of base RAM it was pretty poor on the desktop front.

The lower power consumption is going to be great for those who want a low-hassle folding farm. The original model was fairly poor in terms of "cost per points", but this new one should redress the balance somewhat.

Fingers crossed I'm getting a 60gb model in the next few days for £100

I don't relish the prospect of having to look for a new TV though, and I can only get a 32" set for this pokey room anyway

Cool! Make sure you get yourself onto PSN!

Will do with any luck!

Make sure you add me!

Believe me I'll be adding all round me if I get the chance

Currently the new model is number 3 in Play.com's top sellers list

I'm surprised how popular it is considering it's only 50 notes less.

Mind you, if the new film download service is good, and I mean in terms of download speed and ability to backup films, then it could become this year's big gadget....even though it's 3 years old

From what I gather from the press conference (Gamescon or something), the download service will work just like the downloadable games - you can activate and download as needed on your PS3 or PSP. It should also work like the video trailers in that you can view them as they are downloading - if you have a fast enough connection you can in theory start watching almost straight away, but I'll be background downloading while doing something else - my broadband is painfully slow.

The 360 has had a similar service for a while now, but every movie has a helicopter in it...