Well there's good news as Sony has gone to the trouble of installing firmware 2.0 on all of the PSPs. This means that you should be able to browse the web to your heart's content via the PSP's Wi-Fi connection. As long as you don't go onto any flash sites, that is. Also included with 2.0 firmware is the ability to share and view photos in a variety of formats (.tiff, .gif, .png and .bmp). Also you can change the wallpaper, you lucky person.

Well, that's nice of Sony!

Not really. When firmware 2.0 goes in, homebrew apps go out. You see, some clever bods worked out how to hack the earlier versions of firmware (1.5 mostly), letting you load up all sorts of interesting non-Sony approved stuff onto your memory stick and then playing it on your PSP. Unfortunately firmware 2.0 disables all of that, so for the moment you can say goodbye to emulators for SNES, NES and Megadrive. Of course you wouldn't do that anyway, would you, as that infringes copyright law.

Ummm…yeah. Still, that kinda sucks.

Don't worry. I give it at most a couple of months before somebody manages to come up with a way of getting homebrew to work on 2.0.

So, what can I do with my PSP?

Well, you provided your memory card's big enough you can load a few movies onto it for those longer journeys. Although it's not as easy to do as it should be. The PSP can only read movies in MPEG-4 format, so you'll have to find a program that can convert your movie files (probably in .avi, or something) into MPEG4 files.

A good choice would be the Japanese 3GP converter (http://www.psp411.com/show/product/168/0/3gp_converter.html). This little (free and available in English language) program comes with a PSP mode. You simply tell it what you want to convert and wait. Now, the PSP wants the files to be specifically named as well, but don't worry, the 3gp converter will do that automatically.

Now you plug the PSP into your PC via a USB cable (you'll have to get one separately), with memory card plugged in, and select USB connection in your PSP menu. Or if you're lucky enough to have a card reader, use that. Open the PSP Memory Stick folder and create a new folder (if one isn't already there) called MP_ROOT. Go into that and create another folder by the name of 100MNV01. That's where you want to stick your PSP movie files.

That sounds complicated.

Don't worry, it's easier than it sounds.

How about music?

This is a little easier. The PSP supports MP3s and Sony's proprietary ATRAC3plus formats. You simply follow the procedure above to use the PC to access your memory card, open the folder titled 'PSP', open the folder titled 'MUSIC' and stick your MP3s here.

And photos?

There's also a 'PHOTO' folder in the 'PSP' folder. Guess what you can drag into that… If you have a camera which uses Pro Duo Memory Sticks, you can plug 'em straight in to view photos. If you're geekily inclined, you could of course use this to view saved webcomics.

Zoodex