heck I'm typing this on a a dual quad core PC with 9Gb of Ram, 30 inch screen ( 4096p screen resolution), so I know what a good PC can do, more than most PC fans on this site.........

Now we are getting somewhere about what this thread was supposed to be. The point is that the HD consoles can't compare with the Wii when it comes to plug and play either. You go home with your new game and BAM, install. then BAM, required update. You get the point. Then your console freezes because of firmware updates....

@ Ail - "I hit Best Buy on friday, get a PS3 game, go back home, put the game in the PS3, sit on my couch and can play, no worry ever about whether the game will work or not...."

I bought a game off of Steam the other day, pre-loaded it and played. Didn't even have to walk to my couch and worry about how long my mandatory install on my PS3 would take. And didn't waste any time watching my mandatory install go tick.. tick...tick.. as you can't do anything while installing.

And you can use Ventrilo if you want to talk to your friends when not playing the same game. Or Skype.. or Teamspeak... or Steam...

Dude that happens to like 1% of console users, this isn't something most console owner encounter the way you constantly have to get patches and drivers on the PC... And you have nothing to do for the update on the console, it does all the work for you....

Besides Wii has system updates, just no game patches ( which means if a bugs gets through testing you are screwed..

About 10% of my PS3 games have an install...

Lets see my last purchases :

NBA2k10, Ratchett and Clank : a Crack in time, Dragon Age Origins, Beatles Rock Band, Uncharted 2 : none have install...........

Yes.. your chosen games are representative of the point im trying to make. Sure. Well 100% of my latest Steam games have free DLC.. but how is that valid? And 80% of all my PS3 games have mandatory installs.. but in your case it's only 10%... but... but? What? So?

This thread is turning out to be a repeat of the repeats too.

More or less.

Consoles aren't all that dreamy either when it comes to simplicity, I spent two days getting my PS3 online and even then I couldn't use the PSN store before I installed a potentially harmful firmware update that has been known to make the machines crash and/or freeze up.
Its just not flexible, when I couldn't go online, it simply said "DNS Error" and that's it. I tried every solution available on the web on all forums and official site but nothing worked.
What did I have to do? I replaced the modem with another one (even though the one we have works perfectly with the PC's) and it worked instantly.
It wasn't compatible apparently, which is dumb for two reasons;

1: It never said the modem was the problem, it might as well have said "generic error, take a guess."

2: Our modem is fairly standard fare from a big manufacturer, as is the router (SMC and Robotics) and are known for being universally accepted by most hardware/software by default.

"generic error, take a guess" :))) Made me laugh. I know i've spent hours upon hours with similar problems. And the Error message is just taunting you. Nice one!