Handheld coolness

One of the great pressies I got this Xmas was an iPod Touch 8GB. This device is basically an iPhone without the phone. It has almost all the same software as the iPhone and you can download a lot more from iTunes, either for free or for cheap. Within a short space of time, I've added WeatherNZ, Facebook, WifiTrak, WordPlus and Plasma Ball.

After it it for only a few hours, the key to this device for me, the thing that lifts it out of the ordinary and into the sunshine, is the wireless connectivity. I have a wireless network at home and at work and there are wireless access points at the local cafes. Home and work are free of charge, while the cafe's tend to want $8 / hour, which is dear, but I tell myself it's not tooo bad if it is very occasional and I'm sipping a cup on your own.

The Safari browser works well, though I can't find any way to download files or to view flash content (like the graphs in Google Analytics). All you see is little blue boxes where the flash conent should be. You are able to watch YouTube videos easily enough. I also tried dailymotion.com, and had no problems playing flash videos there, either. Livevideo.com was a no-go. Just little blue boxes where the video player should have been.

On a busy web page, if the text you're reading is too small, you can zoom on the page easily by placing two fingers in the centre and spreading them apart. Repeat as required. To shrink a page, you do the reverse, pinching two fingers together. Easy as.

For my own purposes, I'm able to do my Gmail either via the Safari browser or via the IMAP mail client. Google Maps is good, too...and the 3.5" screen means the satellite view photo mode and the Streetview mode are worth using. Safari lets me see my Google Docs, but I didn't appear to be able to edit them. The iPod Touch screen is big, clear and provides sharp images and colours with good brightness by default.

It's a good music and video player, too, though it is a wee bit of a pain to have to import files into iTunes first, then drag / drop them to the iPod Touch. hat means you MUST have a Windows or Mac system. I usually use Linux, but the laptop also has Vista, so I had what I needed. But I'm used to just copying files over onto my phone or other cheap MP3 players. Still, the 'new coolness' means adding graphics and other nice stuff to the content, so iTunes isn't a completely useless path to acquiring these pretty things. The Apple Tunes store in New Zealand appears to be thin on content. Many of the TV shows based in the US and UK I might like to pay to watch simply aren't available. When content owners simply won't sell it to you at ANY price, then that's what Bittorrent is for, I guess. No biggy.

The 8GB is big enough for me. That's more songs than I can listen to in over a week without hearing the same one twice. I'd watch short fideos on it, but can't bring myself to the level of deseration required to attempt a feature length movie like Dark Knight or Iron Man.

The way I see it, you already have a decent cellphone (I do) and all you want is the 'new coolness', then get an iPod Touch. I'll be able to leave my laptop home more often it does pretty much everything I end to use my laptop for when away from the house. At NZ$389 all up, the iPod Touch delivers all the coolness of an iPhone without the ball and anchor around the wallet connected to a telco.