PSP is a gaming device, not a multi-media warehouse!
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If you buy a PSP expecting nothing more than a gaming system, you will likely be pleased. PSP obviously has beautiful graphics, a nice big, bright screen, great controls, comfortable to hold, it seems to have it all as far as gaming devices go.
Where PSP falls short is it's gaming library. It just can't compete with the DS, as least from a female perspective. It just doesn't have many titles that make me want to shell out $40 to buy them. PSP is by far and away geared mainly at male gamers. I am not trying to be stereotypical here. I am a gamer and I love most types of games, but the genre I love most (RPG) is an area that PSP sorely lacks. There are a few good titles, sure, but nothing compared to the plethora of RPG's available on the DS. Plus, the DS has tons of "just for fun" games like Nintendogs, Cooking Mama, Clubhouse Games, etc. PSP, not so much.
PSP also proclaims itself as an all-in-one device. You can play games, watch movies, browse photos, surf the web, all in this one little device! Let me tell you, the one and only thing that the PSP really does well, is play games. The web browser on PSP is a complete joke. It's miserably slow, even when connected to cable, the controls are really awkward and not intuitive at all, and there is no flash support. It has plenty of other issues, but those are the main ones. I was SO excited to be able to browse on my PSP from the couch, and within a few days I was tired of torturing myself and stopped using it altogether.
As a means to storing and display photos, I suppose it does a decent job. But let's be honest, if you have a digital camera with a view screen, browsing photos on your PSP isn't really any different than viewing them straight from your camera. It's fine if you want to have a custom wallpaper for your PSP or just store some photos of family and friends to keep with you all the time, but don't expect more than that.
As a video player, it does a fine job except that you have to re-purchase all your movies on UMD. What a colossal waste of money! If you have even the slightest knowledge about these things, you can quickly figure out how to rip the DVD's you own into a file that you can then play on your PSP. Then you don't have to buy all those silly UMD's that will be obsolete in a few years anyway! And you don't have to carry them around with you either. Win win, right? The only downside to that is the lack of storage on the PSP. It simply wasn't meant to store much of anything on it's limited memory. If you want to bring movies with you, you're going to have to invest in some memory cards, which run about $50 for 16gigs, which will hold MAYBE 4 movies. After buying your PSP and two 16gb memory cards, you've spent $300. For that, you could have picked up an Archos 5 (or possibly COWON Q5) with 60gb of storage, larger screen, better sound quality, better picture quality, and great web browser WITH e-mail support!
All in all, the point I'm trying to make is, if you want a multi-media device for pictures, videos and web surfing, PSP is NOT the answer. By the time you've bought all those memory cards to store all your photos/videos/music, you could have purchased a device that is dedicated to those purposes and does them all much better than the PSP ever could. The PSP is a gaming device, nothing more. It can dabble in these other areas, but don't buy a PSP thinking it's going to meet all your multimedia needs. It will not.
When considering the choice between the PSP and the DS, I would just suggest that you look at the game libraries for each system and pick the one that has the most titles that appeal to you. They are both great gaming systems. If you can afford to have both, go for it! As gaming devices, you won't be let down by either one.
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