Need a suggestion and answering questions

I was looking at the tutorial on the pandora. I'm reading how to do it and then I started thinking what if I mess something up on my computer? I really what to know how to do some of these cool things for my psp (fat) I want to also put homebrew on there. Do I need the pandora in order to put homebrew on my psp? If ever I do decide on the pandora where do I go from there? What can I do with it. I know I can basically unbrick the psp so far with it if I had the program on my computer. What are the pros/cons with the downgrades? So I far I know that I can play other games besides psp games.
Can anyone help me answer these questions?

if have firware 3.50 or lower you will not need to use pandora