if connected

I’m in love with the PSP. The design is beautiful and the games are amazing. WipEout Pure on its own justifies buying a PSP, even if you never take the PSP out of the house. Several other launch titles are excellent as well (for example Lumines and Ridge Racer).
Yet I’m not sure if the PSP is really a portable device:

• The UMD disk format leads to annoying loading times and non-instant switch on. This is not good on the bus or tube.
• The games are so intense and involving it’s easy to forget where you are. They are extremely close to PS2 games in style. Again, this is hardly a good thing with an expensive, shiny and new device in your hands in a public place.
• The PSP itself is a little on the large side. On the positive, battery life is considerably better than I was expecting and the 3rd party usb charge cable I’m using makes topping up the battery very convenient.
• The widely reported region-free games are not as internationally-portable as the publicity suggests. Yes, if you have a European PSP and are travelling in Japan or the US you can buy a game there and play it on a European console. But when you return home you will not be able to play multiplayer with your friends (I tried US and European WipEout and Lumines and neither worked). Equally, if you want to challenge overseas colleagues to a game, you need to make sure both copies of the game originated in the same region.

Sony has the ability to fix multiplayer with software updates: they’ve already added improved WiFi security with WPA, AVC video playback, and added a web browser as part of the PSP’s version 2 software update.
For Sony, this is part of the bigger dilemma: how to encourage word of mouth sales without damaging the core PSP business model. Technical reasons aside, I see no business value to Sony of allowing other region games to be played and at the same time preventing cross-region multiplayer. Sony should either open up game region features entirely or move to conventional region coding. This in-between approach benefits no one.