Buy Motorstom, Uncharted, Assassins Creed, Lego Star Wars Complete Saga, Call of Duty 4 to go with it and you will be made.

Avoid Lair, Pro Evo 2008 and most probably Haze

You can turn on auto-start:

Settings } System settings } Disc Auto-Start

You'll enjoy the XMB once you are used to it.

Also, you can clump all your downloaded games in a folder so you would just see the disc and your downloaded games folder on the XMB. 

Go over a downloaded game and press square to toggle through the options or press triangle and select group.

Amazing. I guess its like using Windows Vista for the first time... :)  Once you learn you can't go back.

I went to best buy and EB games and another local store that sells used stuff an hour ago. Why are ps3 games so expensive? I noticed that their used value stays up where halo 3 and Gears of war for example are already 20 bucks used.

Resistance I bought was 39,99 used and this came out almost 2 years ago...

I can get Genji for 19.99 but thats not really gonna do me any good now is it :)

Until you need to set options. I hate the 4 item display on pages. I'd rather a scrolling one that moved down with me but had them all listed without swapping screens for each set. It's a nitpick, but the PS3's interface is nicer in that regard (from the parts of it I've used of course).

Likewise, the channel display makes it a bit cumbersome to find things if you have tons of them.

The Wii's interface is the cleanest and feels the simplest though (which works perfectly for its demographic).

 I don't know, it keeps amazing me as well, but you'll get used to it :P Just have to do some more hunting for the good deals ;)

And I recommend you download the Genji demo to try it. Personnally, I played the demo for about three minutes, then I went out and deleted it :P

When it comes to the XMB, if you start thinking that things start getting "overcrowded", you can actually put things into their own folders.

For example, to put a demo into its own folder, just press triangle on the file, go down to information, and set the album to "Demos" (or whatever tickles your pickle), go back to the main XMB and hit square a couple of times, and it'll cycle through to the right organisation mode.

Another tip is to get on that PS:Store and start customising your themes. Or, if you don't like the themes on offer, just make your own through that app that Sony launched.

Oh, and the "View Downloads" option on the PS:Store is the option to view all of your previously downloaded items, not to check the progress on current downloads (this is for if you have to reinstall your HDD, and you need to download some DLC again). If you want to check current downloads, just go to network on the XMB, and scroll down to "Download Manager" - that'll have all of your current, and pending downloads.

Also, when downloading videos, an option to stream the video will come up. I won't recommend this option if you're downloading several files at once, because if you're streaming the video, and that video completes its download, it won't start the next one on the list until you exit from the video.

@SamuelRSmith
He wanted a theme that would take away some of the categories so the XMB is faster to navigate. (ie not having a picture category) Such a theme does not exist.

Themes are a great addition though. The PSStore has some good ones, but google PS3 themes inside your PS3 browser and download them directly to your system.

The PSStore won't have themes like these:
http://www.ps3-themes.com/x/adult18/page/3

That's what I did with the Genji demo too and I did the same thing with the other crap demo's like Blacksite Area 51 and Turok for example.

Anyway, the XMB interface is pretty straight forward and pretty simple to get used to. The main problem I have with it is that it's limited to one column for when you're actually scrolling through music, pictures, and videos. Folders can help a little bit, but it'd be nice to be able to view more than just a column so scrolling from top to bottom doesn't take nearly ten seconds.

I've downloaded a couple of cool themes. I even picked up a sweet Gears of War theme, lol. 

Don't you have to pay (although a small amount) to get themes on the 360? Aren't they like 100 MS points or something like that?  

Some are free. Microsoft ones are free usually where the 3rd party ones you got to pay for 100-160 ms point usually.

If you want Hello Kitty ones...that will cost you bigtime :)

Yeah, I plan to pimp out my ps3 with themes tho...so good thing that exists.