The Great PS3-Computer challenge

Back several months before the PS3 launch, I remember Sony making the claim that the PS3 would not only be as good as any computer, but surpass it in every way. Nearly a year later, I wanted to see if the PS3 could stand up to one of the main things the PC does best: Internet.

Armed with my magical wireless keyboard and mouse, I decided to test the PS3 on how it can handle various sites. I am also happy to report that both my wireless lodgitech keyboard and nexxtech USB mouse are supported, so there is no major hitches there.

Next up is the user interface. Honestly, I won't lie: the interface for the PS3 browser is damn horrible. Right clicking the mouse brings up the control panel, which is pretty much bare bones. Pressing F1 on the keyboard does the same thing, while pressing F4 brings up the website address panel. There are other options for size, javascript, cookies and such, but you can not save the size options for some stupid reason.

Keyboard entry has a small lag, about a half a second or so for each character. The mouse wheel works fine, which is good.

Anywho, now on to the webpages. Few I have tried:
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-Youtube works fine, although some of the other sites that stream video similar to youtube do not work as well.

-4chan does not work, and gives a error when trying to enter via the table on the left.

-Gamefaqs.com works, and I am sure gmail works (although I have not tried it)

-Flash videos work (Such as newgrounds), but there is a weird error causing some flashes to not show certain objects, and not showing text at times.

-Wikipedia works just fine as well

-Assembler comes up very big by default

-You can save pictures to the PS3's hard drive, although I am not sure if you can play certain music (Not sure if you can download, either)
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As a person who has used his TV as his PC's monitor for some time, I can compare the PS3's browser to the PC's quite easily. (Fun fact: This was the point I had to switch to my Normal PC because the PS3 went wacko and automatically posted this topic when I was not done with it). Here are the pros and cons to the PS3 web browsing:

Pros:
*Resolution is much sharper, since it is at 1080i when compared to my normal PC
*Does not need extra cables for sound, which would be a pain in the ass to set up with my normal PC
*Can save images just like normal PCs can (and I think print them too, since it seems to have that option)

Cons:
*Entering text is pure hell, hard to backspace compared to PCs
*Browser is far worse in layout then the PSP's browser for some weird reason
*Random errors for some sites
*Hard to zoom

In general, I thought the PS3 was good for online videos and flash (If it plays it right), but not for things like posting on a website or doing practical computer things. I would far prefer to use my laptop or normal PC on my big screen for text entry and normal web browsing. Its browser is just far too clunky and unsupported at this point to really be used seriously by most people.

 

What about with Linux installed?

Theoretically, the 256MB of RAM is a major limitation.

 

Sounds just like the Wii for web browsing then. Good for the likes of You Tube but that's it. By the way, I don't think the PS3 will play Flash 7 encoded videos such as the ones on my site. The Wii won't either. This is due to the Adobe Flash licenses. Anything not a PC can only have the SDK to older flash video formats.

Yakumo

 

Install Linux and it's a whole new ball game.

 

is that the piraty thing to do? :110:

 

Sony have been pretty generous in what can be installed on the PS3 IMO. There are even install instructions for OpenSuSE, which is a pretty standardised corporate Linux OS and comes with a lot of applications for the office and the Internet.

 

Using the PS3 as a linux-box would be one of my main reasons for purchasing one. Does it have printer/scanner support?

 

Yes, it supports whatever you can plug into it and has Linux drivers. USB (including hubs), blue-tooth, Ethernet, etc. You can also upgrade the SATA laptop HDD for something bigger and the machine supports partitions and NTFS. You can even plug in USB HDDs.

As mentioned, the 256MB of RAM is something of a limitation, but Linux is a lot more economical with RAM than Windows.

 

linux is, but Star Office and a browser running modern pages aren't I m afraid.

I guess my money will be better spent buying a real computer solution such as an iMac, although double the price.

PS: An MIT guy suggested retro-fitting more memory into PS3s for cluster-usage. I d be a happy camper if there was access to at-least 512MB o'RAM

 

Star Office runs fine on the PS3, I've seen it demo'ed multi-tasking with a movie running and compressing MP3s. The PS3 is quite capable of multi-tasking several applications and it can of course use the swap disc when memory is low.

XP runs fine on 256MB with a web browser open and MS Office running in the background BTW.

 

That's funny, because my newly installed SP2 of XP uses about 350MB/1280MB on boot. I have hand-cleaned the registry and startup etc, but I do have quite a few devices inside the box.

Back on the topic of PS3 as a PC, I remain skeptical - perhaps Parris or someone else who owns a PS3 could install a linux distro and let everyone know their results with browsing+star office.

My aim is to use a PS3 as a computer subsitute for general office applications and browsing - what a student would use it for.

 

Sadly, I know jack about Linux

Granted, this is more of a economic approach against Sony's claim that it is a computer and should be treated as one. Most consumers besides the really hardcore do not use linux, and those who do would have a difficult time due to the RAM limitations.

Granted, can't you put Windows on Linux? I heard about it, although I doubt the PS3 could handle XP at a decent level. Even then, a PC with a cheap PCI-e card costs less and works much better then a PS3 with linux installed.

Just my two cents.

 

you could use Wine, but AFAIK it's a native process, else u d have to use an interpretor, and god knows how many cycles you'd waste emulating PC hardware.

 

"Hey guys, lets make a games console for the future. It's gonna have a really expensive, complex CPU, a futuristic BD drive and an nVidia graphics chip!"

"That sounds expensive. What could we do to make it cheaper?"

"How about removing RAM? So what if it's a cheap, easy way to improve performance, and programmers love having lots of RAM? We'll remove it!"

 

You could happily use it for such an application, if you don't mind using Linux. It's not the cheapest option; for portability you'd probably be better off buying a laptop or a budget desktop system, which would be far better suited to the task and cost you less. As a bonus, however, the PS3 does run Linux quite nicely and offers something more for your money if you're looking for something that will do general desktop tasks and offers next-gen gaming. Gaming that would be better than the experience you'd get for a <$500 laptop or desktop PC.

In terms of memory usage, Windows has a large footprint but much of this is side-stepped with the use of VMM, which is of course dynamic. Since you have 1GB of physical memory, Windows VMM is allocating more of it to processes, some of which is reserved. That explains why a fresh install weighs in at 300+MB of physical memory usage. If you had 256MB of RAM, VMM would allocate less of the processes to physical memory and leave more in the scratch space. However, the noticeable difference would not be *that* large until you started running a lot of windows or different processes at the same time.

Really, 256MB is only a big problem if you're trying to multi-task games with general applications, and that is not really something you'd worry about when running Linux on a PS3. It's an OK solution if you have a very limited budget and you want a decent gaming experience.

 

not quite true actually.

The PS3 sports two types of memory, one type being aggressively faster than the other (XDR).

Linux, for reasons unknown to me, (or any OtherOS) is limited to the 256 MB of work-ram, as I assume XDR is mainly geared for the graphics , which is of course barred by the HyperVisor.

 

If i can hold-on to my pants and score a PC and a next-gen console for the price of a PS3 then I will. I guess it will greatly depend on my PC needs and budget at the time of purchase, as it happens usually with all of us.

 

The XDR is for the CELL, the GPU uses slower memory (733Mhz I believe). For this reason the performance is pretty good in Linux. I also read that ther is the possibility that the GPU memory will be accessible in Linux too, just not for gaming purposes.

Since you already own an XB360, a PC and a Wii, it's a null point. If you wanted a PC that offers the performance of the PS3 running linux AND a next gen console then you could manage it for $500 if you bought a secondhand PC and an XB360, but I think the PS3 is a decent enough option. You also get the Blu-ray player etc. It's not the best solution for desktop processing but it is good enough for Sony to make their claim, unlike the PS2.

It is a shame that MS don't offer a Windows option for the XB360, but it would be cost prohibitive for them I suppose and Linux on a MS console just isn't going to happen with their consent :lol:

 

The RSX's memory seems to be dedicated. No way to access that I'm afraid. Plus, with different speeds, it'd impact the speed of the other RAM.

 

The RSX memory is accessible from CELL, however there is a bottleneck because to access the memory one must send an instruction to the RSX and wait for it to fetch and return.

With the initial Linux offering, Sony would not allow hardware accelerated 3D or anything. This is mostly down to Sony wanting to prevent people buying a PS3 and then running games in Linux rather than through the console the traditional way. I think things are a little more relaxed now, but I haven't checked the news on PS3 Linux for a while.