A new PS3

Yes the voucher came on Friday - a recorded delivery of an non-personalised gift card that my neighbour signed for.

I had a large choice between the 320Gb bundle and another 320Gb bundle; both with "Move". The more expensive option came with a choice of one game from a selection; none I wanted. The other cheaper bundle a choice of one game from just two FIFA and Medal of Honour; so no choice there and I picked MoH.

Got it back home and found it was exactly the same width as my old PS2 upon which it now rests. It does stick out at the back though. Powered up and restored an old backup. User identity though not with a photo; no game data; no wireless settings; no PSN settings. Blipped through all that easily enough and copied over my old save games.

At this point I discover that some games save the date/time with the save; and some just use the date/time of when they were created. As they're all being transferred over at the same time it was a little difficult to tell which were the most recent in certain games I've played multiple times.

Next it was the installation of the games themselves. Now sure I could have just installed them as I played them; but that would have meant "Hey I fancy playing [X]" and then waiting an hour or more for the patches to download. I have no idea the effect of trying to play version 1.00 of a game with a version 1.10 save, and had no intention of finding out.

So Saturday and Sunday I just swapped discs and let it run ("Little Big Planet" and "Burnout Paradise" - yeesh). Checking some games as I went I knew I hadn't got a "Dragon Age: Origin" nor "Assassin's Creed II" save file as they were protected; but I was surprised to learn I also didn't have a "KillZone2" or "Dante's Inferno" either I'd forgotten they were protected or simply missed them by accident during the back-up.

So all the games installed and patched and I still couldn't play some because I had add-on content to download. As with the different versions I'm disinclined to start a "Fallout 3" save file in the middle of "Broken Steel" when I haven't downloaded it yet. So the rest of Sunday I managed to acquire all the "Borderlands" content and my PS3 is now patiently pulling everything else down.

While I'm loathe to leave it unattended the snails-pace delivery over the weekend means I think that a  school-day may be the best time.

[Damn it I forgot that by default it turns itself off after 2 hours of no activity and it seems that background downloading doesn't count]