However, I would not buy one of those because their shelf life is about up.

The hard drive size is only important if your 12-year-old wants to download games off the playstation store. I like to download games off the store because I personally have more fun with six $10 games than the vast majority of $60 games. The playstation store also has many PS1 games, and some of those are awesome. If your son has a PSP, he can place any PS1 game (from the store) onto it from his PS3.

http://www.gamestop.com/browse/playstation-3/systems?nav=138d-c4&loc=storefrontheader_row0_col1+cs_ps3

The second playstation in the link is a refurbished 160GB system for $220. It should be awesome, but it looks like it doesn't come with a controller. The playstation above it is brand new, and comes with a controller, but is $30 more. Controllers are $50, so the new one is a better deal.

I would only buy a new playstation (or any console) or a refurbished playstation because you never know how the previous owners treated it. An old one can easily die in a few month, but a new one or refurbished one will last years if you take care of it.

One of the reasons consoles die is because people leave them on for a long time, so make sure to go to System Settings, and set the timer to turn off after X hours of no activity. You can have two different times, one for games and one for movies.

The Playstation is great for Netflix and Amazon, if you're into those things. My wife and I really enjoy them.

The new Playstations can't play the disc version of ps2 games, but if you download a ps2 game off the playstation store, it should play just fine.

It can also play Netflix and music and just plan ol' DVDs. So, you're not talking about a plain console here.

Size of hard drive...not important. You can always replace it with any laptop hard drive later if you want. I have an 80 gig old fat one. I ran out of room one. Had to erase some old game data..no big deal. I might eventually get a new hard drive.

I also have a Vita and pSp, and have owned every playstation since the first one, so you could say I'm a bit of a Sony junkie. But I've never been disappointed. And with Netflix and blue ray and great games both on disc and from the ps store, I just think its worth the money.

PS3 slime(smaller version of their first gen's), and I'm happy with it. It doesn't play any ps2, or ps1 titles, and if memory serves only a certain subset of the first gen's do have the reverse playback options(I believe the 60 gig 1st gen PS3's).

I just checked out the specs between the 160 gig system, and the 320 gig one, and both appear to be about the same, with the exception of the hard drive space(I had to relook, because I swear the 320's had a faster cpu, but they don't).

I usually never buy used tech, unless its uber cheap, mainly because it would chap my ass if I spent say, 200$ on a used system, and it dies on me because I didn't know what the previous owners did to it. With a new one, at least you know how it was treated.

With the size of the harddrive it depends on what how many games the user plans on downloading, most games don't take up much space on the harddrive. The last time I looked at my harddrive I was just under 40gigs used and I have at least 30 different game save files, and the huge DC Universe Online Legends game(which currently holds damn near 20 gigs now).

I went with the cheaper 160 gig one because it was cheaper, saved me 50 bucks because I figured I wouldn't ever be able to fill upp the hard drive unless I used it for other medias(mp3's).

it's constantly updated which means not only is it a great Blu-Ray player but it's also a 3D Blu-Ray player.

Oh, it also can be used to watch netflix, vudu, hulu, and their own network of downloadable stuff which is actually got just about everything...so effectively you can turn a non-smart tv into a smart tv (granted you can do much of that with a 360 too).

I think it's well worth the money if you are going to buy a combo system (which is really what the PS3 is).

aspect. I tried a Vizio, and an LG blu ray player, because I didn't want my ps3 utilizing so many medias(meaning I didn't want to overwork it, and have it die on me), but both the Vizio and LG blu ray players didn't work out well. The Vizio would always have to be rebooted, by that I mean unplug it from the outlet, count to 20 and plug back in, and I had to do that process every time I went from DVD usage, to Blu Ray usage.

With the LG it was a matter of everything not working well, from freezing issues, to skips, on both dvd and blu ray formats.

I can't recall the exact model name, but the Vizio I tried was 100 bucks, the LG was 140.

With that in mind I have had no issues whatsoever with the blu ray, or dvd usage with the ps3, not a hitch nor skip.

I am pretty sure I bought it just a few months after it came out, so I've had it for almost 6 years.

Not a single issue once ever with it. I realize that's probably not always the case, and it could go tomorrow, but that's pretty impressive for such a complicated piece of tech.