De-hyping the PS3

The Playstation 3 has it's advantages. It's styled to suit your living room, plays blu-ray disks, and it's quiet. If you're a gamesplayer (which I'm not), then it's probably less cost and hassle than a PC. But don't believe all the hype. Here are some areas where reality falls short of the hype.

Myth	Reality
1080p high definition games	Not necessarily. Some games are rendered at a lower resolution and then upscaled to 1080p. [Beyond3D]
The fabled 8-core processor	It's a shame that only one of them is any good! This is the Power Processing Element (PPE). The PPE can run two program threads, but this is not the same as having another processor core. There are eight synergistic processing elements (SPEs). Out of the SPEs, one doesn't work and another is reserved for use by Sony. That leaves six SPEs, which are not PC-style processing cores and not well-supported by open source programmers. [Wikipedia]
Cutting-edge memory	The PS3s RAM has quality, but not quantity. Size does matter. [ubuntu forums]
Region-free	That's only for games, not for movies. [slashdot]
Surround sound	If you want to plug your economical PC 5.1 surround sound speaker kit directly into your PS3 then forget it. You'll need some sort of more expensive external decoder. [ps3 forums]
The blu-ray drive	Essential for blu-ray discs, of course. But the PS3's drive can be a bit slow for other types of disc. [joystiq]
Runs open-source software	But crippled by a hypervisor, which restricts access to the graphics hardware. [the inquirer]

For €400/£290, it probably still is a reasonable living-room media player. But if you're serious about whatever it is that you do, then a PC is more versatile. .