I'm thinking about getting a PSP an had a question about the emulation. If I want to play GBA and SNES games, do I need to be running a CFW? Also, I know that SNES emu is iffy at best, but how does GBA emulation perform? Also, do I need to use a CFW to play any PSP games that I get off the net. (In fact, is that even possible, even with a CFW?)

Yes, you do need a custom firmware (or firmware 1.50) to run emulators.

GBA emulation, iirc, is very good, with nearly full speed, sound, graphics, etc.

And yes, with a CFW, you can play PSP ISOs that you download from the internet.

Unless you want to experience touchscreen goodness, it is ill advised to get a DS. Touchscreen function can be fun and innovative to play games with and some games do work well with it, but once the novelty died down, you get an inferior underpowered machine compared to the PSP where you can get almost 100% emulation on most old school console gaming.

Dunno how the DS came into this, but you nailed my thoughts exactly on the whole PSP vs DS issue.

Uh, i don't know either but i just want to illustrate the real strength of PSP.
And yeah, the LCD screen is another . I have a DS once and it is really hard to look at the two tiny screens.

Just get a PSP and install a CFW and you will never look back

2 screens isn't that hard to get used too, but wide screen is always better(since we have 2 eyes(obviously) and they are horizontally aligned), the DS is vertical so..

yah, and GBA works just fine on the PSP, I just wish it could act like the cords over WiFi..

Despite the arrangement of our eyes, they contribute more to depth than width of vision; our view is still closer to 4:3 than 16:9. Just some trivia.

The 2 screens I think is a great novelty, just not a good system paradigm.

yeah nintendo limited the DS too much, it isn't that strong, and it only has 4 megs of RAM(kinda low...)