Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

It’s looking likely that a new PS3 model will be arriving with the Blu-ray version of the Spider-Man 3 movie later this month if several indicators that have been cropping up in the news are to be believed. Here’s the roundup with my impressions of each piece of the puzzle, topped off with a comparison of this model to the others on the market.

The FCC filing: A new model with 2 USB ports instead of 4 and no flash memory card reader was filed with the FCC. I’m no electronics expert, but I think the stats on the bluetooth and WiFi internal antennas given to the FCC show they’ve improved or at least changed — perhaps new parts vendors are supplying them — in this version. Nothing lost since USB thumb-drives are probably far more numerous and popular, and you either buy a USB hub or invest in bluetooth headsets and keyboards. Better antennas could be nice.

Blu-ray Savings Page: The web page you go to to apply for your five free Blu-ray movies when buying a qualifying Blu-ray player like the PS3 has been updated with the PS3 model given to the FCC. If even the secondary promotional page is ready now, this has to be coming very soon.

October 12th Press Conference: A 10/12 press conference has been announced, and the words “big bang” used in conjunction with it. This could be the system’s kickoff date for the holiday shopping season.

A BestBuy Listing: Someone found a BestBuy listing for a $399 PS3 with the Blu-ray version of Spider-Man 3 packed in to go on sale on October 28th. Netflix tells me this version of Spider-Man 3 is indeed coming towards the end of this month.

It’s looking like a done deal, and while none of the information to date indicates the hard drive size, 40GB should be more than enough for just about everyone who uses a PS3, especially since it can stream media from elsewhere on your network. And eventually you can always just slap in a regular laptop hard drive to replace it down the road.

Compared To Other PS3′s this new model most closely matches the launch 20GB model of the system. Here are the pluses and minuses per all of the SKUs of PS3 we’ve seen to date.

PS3 20GB: (now gone from retail)
+ hardware backwards compatibility
+ 4 USB ports.
- No Wi-Fi for network connectivity or PSP Remote Play
- smaller hard drive
- $100 more expensive.

PS3 60GB: (discontinued, still available at most retailers)
+ hardware backwards compatibility
+ 4 USB ports.
+ larger hard drve
- $100 more expensive.

PS3 80GB: (now available)
+ 4 USB ports
+ much larger hard drive
+ MotorStorm pack-in game
- $200 more expensive!

Of course I continue to lament the loss of hardware backwards compatibility in both the 40GB and 80GB offerings. I still recommend people pick up the 60GB units still on store shelves to get that compatibility back, but Sony shows no signs of going back on that decision.