Is hacking the PSP and/or iTouch worth the risk?

Before I start off, you should know that these facts will all be based off my personal experience and that If you do decide to hack or jailbreak your PSP or iTouch, the decision ultimately comes down to you. I am not responsible if you do decide to hack or jailbreak your PSP or iTouch, and then it breaks.

Sony and Apple have both created two devices that are the essence of fun and entertainment. The Play Station Portable, or the PSP, is a gaming device that is capable of not only playing games, but also watching movies, listening to music, looking at photos, browsing the internet, and using Skype (only PSP-2000 and above models). The iTouch is an extremely addicting little device that can play music, watch videos, look at pictures, and run Apple-sold applications. As fun as these devices may be, there is one thing that many people don't realize that is similar about these two products. In order to receive the full benefit of using the PSP or iTouch, you need to pay more of your hard earned money. And that is most likely the exact reason why someone would choose to hack and/or jailbreak their device, to receive those benefits for free, but all good things can come with consequences.

I'll start off with the Play Station Portable. I bought mine roughly around 2006, and I loved it. I could not put it down for one moment because I was too engaged into playing games like MLB '06: The Show, or Socom: Fire Team Bravo 1. But soon, like every other kid who loves video-games, I wanted more. Each PSP game costs around 34.99$. For a 13 year old who is in a middle-class family, that's a lot of money. Now I know that the PSP game price is not as expensive as an Xbox360's, but keep in mind that the Xbox can handle way better games then the PSP. Anyways, after researching online on how I could obtain these UMD's (Universal Media Disks. They are CD's for the PSP), I stumbled across a topic on how you can hack your PSP, and run official Sony games for free. At that time, there was no such thing as a Pandora's Battery, a tool now used by people to easily and almost safely hack your PSP. I had to use the old fashion way of buying a game, and using an exploit in the game in order to hack my PSP. The Grim Reaper of this process is if anything goes wrong, then you have yourself a fancy and 100$ paperweight, otherwise known as a "Brick" in the PSP term.

The Cons about Hacking your PSP: Bricking. Brick. Brick. Brick. Brick. Brick. Brick. You'll always find that word in any PSP site that has to do with hacking it, where one stupid kid messed up and bricked his PSP. A bricked PSP basically means that you screwed up it's flash files. The PSP has 4 Flash folders. Flash0, Flash1, Flash2, and Flash3. Those files run the PSP. They're its heart, kidney, lungs, liver. If those are messed up, your PSP will not work. The PSP will turn on, but will not respond, nor activate the screen, and will shut off by itself in about 15 seconds. That's the only bad thing about hacking the PSP. If you can get by that, then you're good.

The Pros about Hacking your PSP: Ahh. After you hack the PSP, it's like freedom. I don't know where to start with this. First off, you can download iso/cso files off the internet, which are rips from the official Sony UMDs, and play them perfectly on your PSP! This is a HUGE money saver when it comes to playing games. And a whole new line of games/applications are introduced. Homebrew. Basically 3rd Party games. You can play Gameboy games, N64 games, ans SNES games on your PSP. You can use it as a universal remote control (only psp-1000 models). You can also change the theme of your PSP. Instead of that boring background wave, and the mono-chromatic icons, your can change those to the themes available for download on the web, and believe me, there must be over 10,000 available themes.

Is it worth the Risk..? In my opinion, yes. Definitely. You will be saving a lot of money by doing so. Also, there's really no risk for hacking your PSP, that is, IF you follow all the directions given to you, whether it be from Youtube, or from a Readme in a text file. All you have to do is listen to the instructions down to the last detail, and everything should go fine.

Now, onto the iTouch. Apple has introduced the AppStore. It is a catagory in the iTunes Store where you can buy applications for your iTouch. they can range from free, all the way up to some apps that cost 100$! When I got iTouch, I had already hacked my PSP, so I was already well aware of the risks. But believe it or not, there is something magical Apple has done for us that basically reduces all risks to 0%. It's called, "Restore". If anything should go wrong during the process, all you need you need to do is to connect your iTouch to the computer, and click on "Restore" when it detects your iTouch.

The Cons about Jailbreaking your iTouch: None. Well, actually there have been some cases where someone tried to jailbreak (hack) their iTouch, something goes horribly wrong, and the computer can't even detect the iTouch when it connects to the computer. But I have never had that problem so I cannot say if that was legit because there have been very few cases of that really happening.

The Pros about Jailbreaking your iTouch: Everything. Basically exactly like the PSP's. You can install new themes, and actually use a background, and not the boring plain black. You can install 3rd party apps, and can install AppStore applications.

Is it worth the risk..? YES! YESYESYES! Go for it. During the jailbreaking process, all you need to do is to press a couple of buttons, and then you're done! It shouldn't take more than 3 minutes. There is like a 0.0000000000000001% chance of anything going wrong, unless you do something incredibly stupid like turn off your computer or pull the iTouch out of the computer during the process. Like the PSP, if you follow the instructions, everything should be OK.

Overall, the final results is worth the risk of hacking and/or jailbreaking your PSP/iTouch. I've said if before, but I'll say it again. Follow all the instructions given to you by whatever is giving you the right instructions, use your common sense to determine what the "right" instructions are, and  everything will be fine. Once you have finished hacking, you'll be free of the bind that Apple and Sony had around your wallets. Happy Hacking!