Which version?Follow

I finally need a PS3.

Because my PS2 might be dying (sometimes it works fine, other times the controls get all jittery even when I swap out controllers), I'd like to get one of the backwards-compatible ones, but as far as I know there are multiple original and slim models, and I want to make sure I get the right one.

1) Are the PS2 backwards-compatible ones inferior in any way other than that they are necessarily the old fat model?
2) I can swap the HDD to a bigger one, right?
3) Are current-firmware PS3s of all models hackable? I'm assuming the backwards-compat (at the least) is not region free, and I wanna play some Japanese games to put all this gorram kanji study I'm doing to use outside the classroom (current learned kanji count: 1383. 'bout 800 to go to finish out the jouyo set).
4) I should really buy a George Foreman grill one of these days.

I know I could ask Google, but /k/ needs moar posts.

Yes, I am a ***** for Tales of Symphonia. A dirty, herpes-ridden, twenty-five cent ***** for Symphonia and I don't give a fuck

1) No, but that definitely makes them inferior.
2) yes.
3) short answer: None of them are. Anything past 3.55 is not hackable. Long answer: All models prior to...2010? Can be downgraded to 3.55 with hardware (possibly requiring it to be soldered into the system), and then you can do whatever with it, but newer ones are still unhackable as far as i know. All ps3s are region free.
4) They're pretty nice if you don't feel like using a real grill. I cook burgers on one all the time.

If you want to pirate games, find anything on a lower firmware on ebay or something, otherwise just buy the latest model and play ps2 games with pcsx2.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2013 9:15am by Rachel9

Wow, PCSX2 has made major strides since the last time I checked it out. Kingdom Hearts runs completely smoothly 99% of the time on my P.O.S. Corei3 laptop, and looks so much better than on PS2.
I'm actually very impressed by the level of facial animation now that I can see it in full detail.

Somewhat relevant: one of the big PSP emulators, PPSSPP, just came out with a major new patch apparently. I haven't tried it myself yet but I hear it's pretty good.

That I cannot answer :P