Not "obviously", it depends on the purpose. If he wants to use cIPL flashing or Pandora's in the future, an early (8B Data Code or earlier) is going to be a superior choice in all respects other than the lack of the microphone which was useless in the first place (only used in S.O.C.O.M which is offline now and in Skype which is poor on the PSP anyways). For heavy modding, an early 2000 is going to be infinitely better since no matter how badly you screw up, in 99,99% of cases you can recover using Pandora - with the 3000 you can't.
That being said, both systems are hackable, so if you only indend to use homebrew and backup loaders, either is fine.