Which is the more reliable model?
Again, I'm sorry to hear about your loss.
Statistically speaking so far I have not seen any data that suggests one specific model is more reliable then another, although it appears they all are very reliable in general. There are some people who still think you shouldn't run F@H for reliability reasons, but Stanford University among others, and thousands of F@H users have been running their PS3 24/7 for over a year without any reliability problems.
However, if you consider that there are about 20 million PS3s world wide so far, even if just 5% failed, that's a million failed PS3s. Some have suggested that the failure rate is closer to just 1%, but that's still 200,000 PS3 - so even with such a great reliability record, some people are still going to have a problem.
For these reasons I would not be concerned about which PS3 to get in terms of reliability, but I would in terms of features. Personally though, if this happened to me I would want a new PS3, as I would always be wondering if what ever caused the problem to begin with may not have been properly identified, and thus fixed, which would mean it could fail yet again... and frankly I wouldn't want to be always worrying about that, and having to constantly back-up my data just in case.
Like you, I have a 60GB model that I bought over two years ago, and although I have never had a reason to need the backward compatibility, I do use the built-in memory card reader all the time, and I also use all 4 USB ports. I also play SACDs on my PS3 on occasions.
So it would be an added inconvenience to have to switch to a new PS3 that has no built-in memory card reader and thus I'll have to use a external USB reader.
That said, the new PS3 thanks to the 65nm chips, uses less power and runs cooler, so a change might be good.
He won't lose his trophies - they're associated with his PSNID, not his console.
👍
Plus I'm sure he can find people willing to share gamesaves to get what he's lost back (I can provide a GTA4 100%, but I haven't 100%ed LBP yet)
I sent him my 100% LBP game save, but I don't know if LBP game saves are PSN ID locked or even regionally locked, as he is in Australia and I'm in the US.
Well I had to wipe everything off my old PS3 for some reason so I lost my old account.
As Famine said, PSN account info, like trophies, is stored on Sony's servers and can easily be retrieved no matter what PS3 you have.
All you have to do is select
Create New User (it doesn't matter if it is the same name as before as it makes no difference), then under the
PlayStation Network menu bar in the XMB, select
Use an Existing Account. Simply put in the email address and password for your old account and now most of your account info will be updated to that PS3. I believe your saved messages, browser bookmarks, and your predictive text dictionary are not replaced... although if you use the
Backup Utility, that info can also be restored.