Go with 80 gig. I only have 40 and so far never had problems with space.

I made some considerations and in my opinion the PS3 will show it's the best console on the next years. I might be wrong but...

Exclusives: IMO the list of exclusive games on the PS3 will be superior by far. Killzone 2, Uncharted 2, God of War III, Gran Turismo 5, White Knight Chronicles, Yakuza 3, Heavy Rain, Team Ico Project and Final Fantasy XIII Versus seem to get over Halo Wars, Halo 3 expansion pack, Alan Wake, Star Ocean and Huxley.

Price: It is obviously the reason why the Xbox360 is selling better now, if not the other will be the current winner. Anyway, considering it doesn't have wifi, some versions lack hard disk and it makes people pay to get online it'll be pretty more expensive in the end (4 years of online playing x 60 €= 240 €).

Blu-ray vs DVD: I don't think having a blu-ray player along with your console is a bad option is you are into movies. Also supports DVDs and most of your own movie files, so it's the obvious choice. Also, DVDs are becoming small and downloads of big size no too quick, so Microsoft will probably sell one of these players sometime apart and not for free, I guess.

Internet interface: I think PS3's HOME is still in beta but it looks much more impressing than the 360's ugly avatars. HOME looks elaborate, it reminds me of Secons Life.

Bad publicity in the Internet: I'm not neither a fanboy of Sony and Microsoft, in fact I've always enjoyed Nintendo franchises and enjoy the hell out of my DS (also play a PC but I prefere consoles for playing). But, for what I read in Internet forums it seems there a lot of fanboys that had a Gamecube or XBOX and saw how their consoles were literally smashed by PS2 and now hate Sony.

I'll be buying a PS3 as soon as I finish Devil May Cry 4, Portal and Bioshock on my PC.

Um... no...

If you're going to post something as fact, please check it first.

The PS3 will happily accept an external HDD for game saves, movies, music, pics and firmware update files.

You can even back up to an external HDD.

I know because I did this when I upgraded my PS3's harddrive to 250GB, I backed up and restored everything from that external drive just fine, and it's certainly not a flash drive.

As long as it's formatted as FAT32 and not NTFS it will work.

on topic, get the 80GB one for now and then upgrade it later if you run out of space. SONY's quite happy for you to do that, instuctions are even provided in the PS3 manual.

Yikes finally someone who can think about big picture and calculate total cost of ownership.

You restored my faith in humanity :)

Also you should add region unlocked software for ps3 unlike x360 where people are still waiting for Tales of Vesperia to release in EU.

yeah that is a nice feature.

I know some older (late 50's) guys who just bought a Wii while on holiday in Australia. I haven't got the heart to tell them that software from other zones might not work without much fiddling. Region free games are a great feature, now if only more Blu-Rays were region free too i'd be a happy little monkey.

Get the 80 GB, then change the HDD for a bigger one, it's cheaper than buying the 160 GB and you get more space (and also you can put the 80 GB HDD on the PC)...

So PS3 is region free? That'd be great because I live in Europe and some games are only available in Japand and the US. I imported some games like Fantal Fantasy IV and The World Ends With You for my DS months before they were released in Spain. But, PlayAsia, to put an example, doesn't send US games to Europe, so I thouth it was not permited to play zones from other regions.

I say get the 80gig ps3 purchase a 160gig hd from the shops then keep you 80gig for spare parts

Try to get the 40g one if you can find it at a discount, they usually sell for at least $50 cheaper, then when you have the money invest in a 240g laptop HDD and replace it. Future proof your PS3 :). The cost would end up about the same as getting a 80 (probably 10-20 bucks more) and you get something thats even better than the 160g HD at less cost, plus a free 40g laptop HDD for backup etc.