PSP advice needed, please

Mutley got me thinking about buying Mrs. T, one of these hand held little machines. My problem is quite simple.
I don,t have a clue what it can do for "normal" type people who are not into main stream gaming! So, boys and girls, and oldies like me. Help me understand, in plain, non-geekie talk, what it can do.
ie. She is due to travel to Moldova in January (freezin') which normally entails nearly 24 hours of travel with various transfers involving planes, trains and buses/cars.
I,ve tried all the Sony web pages and whilst they are helpful its like talking to a caveman about browsers, emails, processors! Haven,t a clue!

It can play games, you can buy movies for it (UMD movies - search on Play.com) or you can buy a memory card to put in it and copy videos and/or music on to it. I used one for travelling up to 2 years ago - it now resides in Tenerife! You can buy cables for it to connect it to a tele and play games or movies from it onto the tele! You can also buy additional battery packs for it so if one battery dies when you're on the move, you can put in another. I wouldn't rely on it being able to connect to the internet - it's use here is mostly for downloading software updates and possibly downloading games. Depends on which model you choose - mine is the Slim and Lite version which as I said is a few years old - I haven't got a clue as to what differences there are between this and the more up to date models..!