@ Anonymous Coward

Can confirm that replacing the HD does not invalidate your warranty, unless you change the speed of the drive.

AFAIK, if you replace your 40/60gb 5400 drive with a 100Gb 5400 drive, you are fine.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/11/11/ps3-manual-details-hdd-battery-replacement/

There is some debate amongst Sony employees as to whether the introduction of a 7200 speed drive will do any long term damage to the PS3. But to be honest, the test results I've seen are negligable just for the extra cost of the 7200 speed drives (see above link for more comments on the 5400-7200 debate).

personally, I've downloaded all of the available demos and vids I can from the PSUK site and still have plenty of space to spare. Although if I was to use it as a media centre, or using the soon-to-be-available PVR, i would no doubt look at upgrading.. But the HDs are cheap enough these days:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Products.ASP?CatID=16&FilterCategories=429&Thumbnails=yes

Hope this helps.

As for backwards compat., well to be honest, I adore my PS2 so much it's still out. Especially when it's all nicely on the net so I can decimate on Killzone (unless someone can point me to a tech document that allows me online using a PS3 with PS2Killzone).

All good in the hood, and remember the prices in Japan do not have sales tax, re-translation of manuals, shipping, yarda yarda yarda..

For the UK, the prices are becoming more affordable (just like the Xbox, PS2, Saturn, Dreamcast, Megadrive... etc were when they first came out!)

..enough now, fingers are tired. Oh and I lilke the photo of Paris :o) (for those "There is no Hilton Link!")