So I finally got it…I was one of the lucky few to get my hands on a PS3 Slim the day it was launched. Luckily, I pre-ordered it from both GameStop and Amazon.com in a race to see who would get it to me first. Talk about new technology – I got a text the morning of August 28th from GameStop letting me know my PS3 Slim was ready for pickup! I quickly canceled the Amazon.com ordered I placed [at no charge] and went during my lunch break to pick up the console.

I must say I had some jealous eyes at me in the store. The GameStop rep even told me how lucky I was to get it so early, as they only have 5 systems in stock for pre-sales only. There were a lot of people in the store clamoring and trying to get their hands on the system. I was even offered $400 for mine, but at that point I was taking anything less than $500.

Overall, I must say I was pretty impressed with the system, although there was a couple minor things I was disappointed about. The un-boxing was relatively painless, system was packed pretty well to avoid any damage in transit. I was excited to finally have a DVD player, let alone a blu-ray player in my room so I can finally watch some movies. I bought a nice HDTV last year so I was finally going to get some good use out of it. I must say that I am still a bigger Xbox fan, but I found the PS3′s selling points of blu-ray capabilities and some of the PS3 exclusive title’s worth the buy. With tax, the system ran me approximately $325 which wasn’t bad considering the $100 price drop announced the week before.

From the looks of the system, the PS3 Slim was noticeably smaller than the PS3 ‘Phat’. It was approximaltey half the size of its’ predecessor. I must say I wasn’t overly thrilled about the looks of the system besides its size. It was definitely lighter, and used less power and such according to it’s advertisements – but I found the new logo and design a little boring. The entire system was designed in plain black, with the new PS3 logo on the top of the system. The logo itself is black as well, and didn’t stand out with the nice silver trimming that the PS3 ‘Phat’ had. I also noticed that the PS3 Slim was shaped more as a square instead of the rectangle look that the PS3 ‘Phat’ had. I actually liked the rectangle shape a little better and felt that it helped with more balance as I have to put the PS3 on top of my cable box. In any event, I can’t say that the new system is ugly, it is definetly sleek and pretty, but I thought some of the elements of the older PS3 were a little flashier and nicer, although the decrease in size definetly made me happier.

One thing I was incredibly disappointed about was the lack of HD cables. I was very surprised to just find standard AV cables with the PS3 Slim, and that they didn’t even provide Composite HD cables, let alone an HDMI cable! I went out and bought one for about $10, no big deal, but c’mon Sony! You’re trying to push an expensive PS3 system whose biggest selling point is blu-ray technology, and you can’t even provide ANY type of High-Definiton cable? I researched this and read reports that companies did this in the past and found that HD cables weren’t used a lot of the time – although I must say I find this very hard to beleive. In this day and age, almost every household in America has at least one HDTV, and that’s probably where they would be hooking up their PS3.

Another thing, although minor that I was suprised about was that the PS3 Slim came with the older version of the software installed. No big deal, but I was under the impression that the PS3 launch was being coincided with the launch of the 3.0 software. I found out that it was scheduled to release a week later, so I waited for the download. Overall pretty painless – took about 20 minutes of my time.

In conclusion, the PS3 Slim is a beautiful console and worth the buy at $300. Besides the few minor aforementioned details, the PS3 Slim offers all the features of the earlier PS3 models at a lower cost. If you don’t have a PS3 and are looking to buy one – this would be the recommended one. The 120GB hard-drive leaves you lots of room for photos, music and videos – another aspect I find a little better on the PS3 than the Xbox. In conclusion, I still feel that the Xbox has a better gaming core, while the PS3 has a better multimedia core. With that said, we can most likely see the combination of the two with the next releases of the prospective systems in the upcoming years. Sony and Microsoft and maybe even Nintendo, will hopefully try to provide cutting-edge gaming machines, that also allow us to experience home-theater multimedia.