Netflix did just partner with Sony. It's guaranteed that Netflix will come to the PS3 in the near future--it's already coming to Sony's...TV...service...XMB thing "fall 2009." The moment the timed exclusivity with Microsoft dies in a fire, it'll bounce to consoles everywhere, or maybe it already has, and in that case, it'll be here before the year's out, dog.

Well, I don't care either way about the LInux thing - didn't even know it was there; however, no BC no buy for me. I did recently consider a PS3 - but ill-conceived bad-behaviour on Sony's part made me reconsider. Besides, I have no time between GOG (plus other PC games) and a surprise PSP and 360 (long story).

So you're buying a PS3 purely as a netflix portal? Isn't it a bit wasteful to buy a $300 console to do the same job performed by the xbox you already own
Also: OMFGWTFBBQ?!?!?!?!?!?!!11 A SLIM PS3? I never could have imagined, this is such a shock!

Same here; no PS2 BC = no purchase.

This no BC argument is ridiculous...
Guys look like spoiled chumps demanding that Sony not only lower the price, but to add back the excess features that made it so expensive in the first place so they lose even more money! You buy a system to play that system's games, primarily. Being able to toss out the last gen is a bonus, and a recently-implemented bonus at that.
REGARDLESS, PS2 BC will come eventually through a patch, likely before the year's over.

Or at least they *would* look like spoiled chumps if Sony were giving PS3's away for free, with a hug. There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying "this product doesn't meet my demands, therefore I won't buy it."

What if we don't care about the backwards compatibility but do demand a hug?

A hug would be pretty nice.

Personally, I don't understand the complaint about no BC. When the PS2 included backwards compatibility, it was a unique thing that had never happened before in the console market, what made everyone think that it would become the standard? It certainly isn't a model that the other console makers are following (the Xbox360's limited BC is barely a token effort). Most of the people who are complaining about it seem to be people who already own a PS2 anyway and even if you don't own one, a brand-new PS2 is only $100 (at the moment, I'm sure a price cut on that is forthcoming too). Why do you need backwards compatibility when you already have or can still get a console perfectly capable of playing PS2 games?
EDIT - Looks like it didn't take long for a new PS3 rumor to start. Apparently Sony is going to market a 250GB version of the slim PS3:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/blogs/rumor-control/909119209/27004345/sony-planning-250gb-ps3-slim.html

I thought for sure that they had confirmed ps2 compatibility coming to the ps3.. maybe that was a dream...

The ORIGINAL PS3s had backwards compatibility because they had the core of a PS2 on the motherboard, from what I remember reading that was one of the first things to go a when they were trying to cut the costs of making the second run of PS3s a year or so ago.
A token effort that plays what, about half of the games for the original xbox? With a totally different set of hardware thats not too bad. Not as good as it should have been I agree but not bad.
Aren't PS3 hard drives user replaceable though? Whats to stop me buying a PS3 and putting in a 500GB drive?
Are PS3s fully region free? I might think about ordering one from america, 300 yankbux translates to about au$360 which is a saving of about au$140, even with postage it'd be a damn sight cheaper.

Considering both Xbox machines are little more than a Windows PC in kiosk mode with specialized hardware, backwards compatibility should have been no issue at all. It certainly shouldn't have required multiple "compatibility updates" that only apply to certain games. With the way MS dropped the ball on compatibility and the fact that Nintendo never even considered it, its really no wonder to me that Sony decided to drop it. They weren't really gaining anything by it and it was obvious from the sales numbers of their competition that it wasn't something that most consumers were overly concerned about.
The original PS3s had user replaceable HDDs, who knows about the new slim version. I'm sure we'll find out very soon, though.
EDIT - Ooh, bad cut/paste on my part, took out the whole region question. Technically, PS3s are region free, but the games and movies you run on them may not be. For example, if you try running a European purchased game on a US PS3, you could run into a "This game not supported" error. You also can run into issues with DLC, where your ability to download certain DLC is restricted by the region (US game, played on European console, DLC is US only, you can't get it). The part that sucks is it is all up to the publisher to decide whether or not there are any region restrictions in the games or DLC and they don't give you any warnings about it before hand, so you might not find out that a game is restricted until you get it home and try it.

Both the xboxes share a lot of common features but the change from Nvidia to ATI as a graphics supplier was mentioned as a major cause of the issues since ATI lack some of the features the original xbox's geforce 3.5 used. Whether that was true or an excuse I can't be sure but given that I've had nothing but shit from ATI hardware being dodgy over the years, I tend towards believing it
There were also the dodgy ones where AMAZINGLY many of the games that had 360 counterparts were magically incompatible...

The original Xbox had a Pentium 3 (750MHz, if I remember correctly), and the rest was also standard PC hardware (almost, the graphics controller was some mix between GeForce 3 and 4, also according to memory). The 360 on the other hand, doesn't use X86 chips, but a PowerPC variant (the game demos before release were apparently run on Apple Power Macintosh G5 computers, as the processor was very similar) so all games compiled for the earlier machine is run through software emulation (and we all know that not everything runs very well, if at all, under emulation) - the operating system in both though is based on Windows NT (2000 kernel for the original Xbox, and I don't know about the 360).

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten it was a PowerPC chip! Shame they don't just make a full xbox emulator on the marketplace, that'd be a nice addon.