I'm a pc player, bought this so that I could meet up online with some friends.
The machine itself is reasonably quiet, can hear both the drives when they are being accessed but nothing excessive. I've had this 5 months and only experienced one crash/ freeze so the platform is pretty stable. It does have frequent updates which can be annoying but then windows and ubuntu have their updates too.
It is very solid and very easy to set up. The controller connects easily and set up to my wlan was simple. It searched, found my network and all I had to do was fill in the pw. The sound is excellent but then again this will also depend on your speakers etc.
Offline this is a treat for playing games, turn on and in about a minute you are playing. Really excellent.
However, on line gaming is appalling. From setting up your online ID (confusing, id names not being accepted etc), to Sony Europe's total lack of customer service. They take a minimum of 3 weeks to respond to an email.
Game matching is slow, players frequently drop out, if it's the host then there goes the game. Why Sony couldn't have followed the tried and tested route of dedicated servers for games I don't know. The current model is atrocious. My friends who've never played online on a pc just accept this but it really isn't good enough. I am unsure whether all online gaming is the same but for the games I've tried they all use one player as host.
Another gripe is the in game chat. Why can't you just select friends and enter a virtual room like with TeamSpeak? Everyone can hear you, muting only stops you listening to that teenager who thinks it's funny to sing in a high pitched warble, or the guy who wants us all to listen to his choice of music.
Having said all that, the music videos that download is a nice touch, just shame youtube HQ is now better quality.
Gfx are now beginning to show their age, but a ps3 can't compete against a mid range gaming pc in this respect. The pc will cost at least 3 times the ps3, but it does offer the ability to be upgrade.
So would I recommend the PS3?
For solo play, definitely. Cheap and very, very good at what it does.
For online gaming, well it depends. If you've never played pc online then you won't know any different so go on, try it. If you've gamed with a pc online then not really, at least not till they've got a different gaming model.