since i don't feel like retyping everything, here is my quick take on home, copypastaed from a post i made on digg:

Chalk me up as someone who really likes the ps3's game offerings to date, but thinks home is a complete waste of sony's development resources. It's basically the sims plus myspace, offering very little other than a virtual sausage party and a few interesting arcade games. Sure they will add more, but the useful things home will offer (like game launching with a friend) could have just as easily been integrated into the xmb.

I see stuff like this and reading the PA newspost today they pretty much mirrored my thoughts.  Here's a nice little excerpt.

And remember before you or anyone else start calling them XBots, the PA crew love them some PS3.

I remember when Star Wars Galaxies was in beta. People pointed out the problems, SOE said no problems they will all be fixed once the game launches. Turns out it was all lies and many of the problems were never fixed months and years later. All kinds of add-ons were promised but never delivered. And that was how they treated PAYING customers.

I guess calling it a "beta" is an easy way to release something w/o having to make sure everything runs smoothly first. Imagine if other businesses tried to run this way? (Toyota PR: "Yes, the brakes do tend to give out going downhill, but as we keep on telling people, this is only our BETA car release!")

Alright, having had more exposure to Home now here's my view on this. PA guys put it the best, it's a very cumbersome menu. Now I will hear talking about community and whatnot, alright I'll give you that, but that part is basically Second Life minus most of Second Life content. I draw this similarity because the people on Second Life are mostly people who don't game much, hardly the hardcore gamers the PS3 has. Both are quite literally Facebook in 3D in their simplest form. At least in Second Life you can actually earn real life money, some even earn their living like that, without that there would be even less people in SL. As ameratsu said, Sony's development time would have been far more productive elsewhere. The audience for this is way too small for it to have been worth their time.

I understand and agree with many of your complaints.  The easiest way around the occupied alley is to visit in a non peak hour and not right when it launches(so unless your awake at 3am or on while the 12 y/o's are in school you might not have a chance).  The arcade games are actually very addictive.  I didn't have an issue downloading the rooms though.  It would download and install in less than a minute.   You also exit Home just like you would exit any PS3 game, PS button on controller, select "Quit Playstation Home", and press the X button.  My last bit of advice is to avoid use of vulgar language in your post next time.  Not only is it offensive to some but it erodes the valid point(s) and content of your post.

What scares me, though, is the thought that maybe they will get desperate enough to charge for the arcade/bowling/pool, in some way. I mean, real arcades are $.25-$1.00 per game, and bowling is like $8 a game or per hour. What if they start making people buy "passes" for unlimited arcade games in some new add-on, much like big malls will sometimes have those huge arcade areas that use the passes rather than make everyone use quarters.

I really hope it doesn't come to that, but I guess it kinda depends on the arcade games. If they release all their good games like Wipeout HD and Pixel Junk Monsters for $4/month passes, that may be worth it.... but then again, you'd be paying $4 for a lot of games you probably wouldn't be interested in, and you wouldn't "own" any of them.

Most free online MMOs are Open Beta. Which mostly means they are free and you only pay for clothes and items, ala Maple Story. They aren't a finished game because they constantly evolve. Some games go out of Beta, like Ragnarok and start charging to play.

So yeah, the "It's only a Beta" phrase can get played out.

Open betas are available to anyone that wants to participate, much like the current Home open beta.  Your point about Gmail is valid, Sony has stated that Home will run an open beta similar to Gmail's open beta.  I am not sure what the incentive to release a Gold version of Home would be because Sony will not charge money for the application. 

Well if it ever makes it out of "beta" I hope they don't start charging for the service.