Alright here is a review from someone (me) whose last console was a Playstation 2 wayyy back in 2001. I skipped Xbox and PS3 in favour of pc's and I rarely (if ever) played on my friends' consoles.
Picked it up at Gamestop near where I lived, preordered in mid October with no problems, had the 3 games I chose (Killzone, BF4, Assassins Creed) in stock. SO far so good, I attribute that to Sony for figuring it the fuck out. There was probably 100 people at the small store near me with 3 other gamestops in a 5 mile radius.
Setup was easy enough except PSN was down at first last night. When companies are going to figure out that release = heavy load I will celebrate. EVERY single company and hell even the Gov't have not figured this out but whatever, I managed to setup my PSN (had to make a new one) on the console around 2am.
1.5 patch downloaded for me in 1 minute flat, games installed and patched very quickly, games off PSN store (Rasugun or whatever) was a quick download. Zero issues with the PSN Store pretty happy with it, Getting PS+ was easy enough as well.
I like the UI of the system a lot, it reminded me of the Sony blu ray player I had, setting the resolution defaults and sound outputs was easy and it worked without a hitch. Figure I'd try AC4 to see how it is. Load times with the stock hard drive are minimal to non existent, I was annoyed I had to sign up to U-Play whatever that is, but that's Ubisoft for you. Got about an hour in, console ran quiet the entire time, no crashes no controller issues no other problems at all.
Tried Battlefield next, this morning, still no issues. I was connected to PSN so I guess their load issues were resolved. I have never plasyed a FPS on a console before so all I found out is that I am horrible at FPS's with a controller which I will obviously need a lot of practice with. Tried online, worked fine first time, no rubber banding or lag. I did brutal but whatever.
Finally just got finised playing Killzone for a bit, I found it easier to control then BF4 and it was sure prettier. I have a 65" Panasonic plasma and it looked great on it, again no issues with this game. It uses the swpe pad thing on the controller to control your Owl which is neat hard to get used to though.
Overall I attribute to the problems people are having to probably stupidity. The first person to brick his system took the hard drive out while it was on. Its not Sony's fault derps buy their consoles. I would have liked PSN to be a bit more stable last night but being a MMo player for 15 years you get used to it. Controller, system and setup all worked flawlessly otherwise and I am happy with my purchase. Even all 3 games, I will just have to get better at shooters. Resogun is really fun too, and bonus it being free.