Electronics Review: iPod Touch 8GB 3rd Generation

Stars: 5 out of 5
Pros: Easy and fun to use

Cons: Minor things such as no case or instruction book

The Bottom Line:

Your music plus apps

Internet through wireless

A useful device

No Touchy My iPod Touch!

I try very hard not to keep up to date on new electronic gadgets.  Why?  Because when I discover something new that is cool, I want it.  And since I can't afford all the toys I want, I find ignorance is the best approach.  Of course, when I won an iPod Touch, there was no way I was going to turn it down.  The result?  I am hooked on this little device.

Now if that paragraph makes you think I am some techie, let me set the record straight.  I love electronics when they do what they are advertised to do.  If something goes wrong, I have no clue what I am doing.  I've had a cell phone for less than two years.  And I never once had a blackberry.

Basically, the iPod Touch is the phone free version of the iPhone.  The only difference is the lack of ability to make phone calls and send text messages.  Just about everything else you can do there, you can do here.

Of course, that leaves out one detail.  You need a wireless internet connection to get on the internet.  The good news is that connecting is usually straightforward.  The device automatically detects available wireless servers and asks which one you want to connect to.  If a password is required, you are prompted for it.  If you are trying to use a public network that requires an agreement, Safari, Apple's web browser, will automatically come up so you can click the appropriate spot to accept the terms.  Once you are connected, away you go.

The iPod Touch is really a combination small game system, blackberry, and music player.  While the device doesn't come with any games, it is very easy to download them from the iTunes store.  Most of the ones I've downloaded have been fun, too.  It's a convenient way to carry around some personal entertainment.

But you can use it for all kinds of serious work, too.  For example, it comes loaded with different programs (called apps) that allow you to do lots of things.  There's a virtual note pad and a calendar.  You can check weather forecasts or stock prices (delayed by 20 minutes).  There's a calculator that can be simple or powerful depending on what you want it to do.

One of the included apps that I checked out right away is the e-mail app.  I actually set up three accounts with it.  (I had to go into settings to do this.)  Gmail and Yahoo are wonderful with this device.  I can read an e-mail message here or on the computer, and both mark it as read.  My Hotmail account doesn't work as seamlessly, however.  All messages I get show up as new and unread when I check my mail on the iPod touch, even if I read and deleted it from my computer days ago.  Likewise, the e-mails I read on the iPod are still there when I log into Hotmail again next time.

The Maps feature is pretty nice as well.  It will use available wireless signals to pinpoint your current location.  I live in a condo complex, and it is usually off by a street.  That's pretty impressive if you ask me.  As long as you are connected to the internet, you can use it to get directions between two locations or use your current location as a place to start.  The cool part is it stores the latest set of directions in its memory, so you can use it while driving down the road to get you from point A to point B.  Of course, sometimes the directions aren't quite accurate and they'll send you to someplace close, so you'll want to make sure it will get you to the right place before you take off with it.  (I learned this lesson the hard way last week when it got me to the neighborhood where my friend lives and not his actual home.)

As I mentioned, the iPod Touch includes Safari, a web browsing platform.  It works just like any normal web browser and even lets you open multiple windows.  It's not quite as quick and convenient at a full computer, but it will do nicely on the fly.  I used it while out of town for a business meeting to check in on several sites that I normally visit.  The entire iPod is sensitive to the orientation of the device, so you can turn it sideways to get a bigger view of the screen.  And if that isn't enough, you can zoom in on a part of the screen.

I have found that not all websites are truly iPod Touch friendly, however.  Somehow, some of them are able to tell what you are using to browse the site and will tease you with partial information followed by "To see complete details, view our site."  Um, I thought I was!  At least that's what I was trying to do.  Not a strike against the iPod Touch itself.  Just a complaint.

What truly amazes me is how this thing works.  As the Touch part of the name signifies, you just touch the screen to get it to do what you want it to do.  The entire screen has to be sensitive since various apps use various parts of the screen.  I have never had a problem with it working properly.

Furthermore, I can't believe how small this thing is.  It is thinner than my cell phone!  It's got to be less than an inch thick.  It's about two inches by four inches big.  How they get all those electronics in there to work properly is beyond me.

As you might have guessed, there's quite a bit I do with this thing that involves typing.  When you need to do that, a standard typewriter appears.  It took a little while to get used to the spacing of the keys since they are rather close together.  However, I find the longer I have it the faster I go.  Furthermore, the program is smart enough to automatically correct common typos, especially if you hit the letter next to the one you mean.  I have always found these corrections to be right on the money and very helpful.

I was excited when I got this and saw the photo app.  Doing a little more research, I discovered that this is only for photos already taken on other devices.  You can store photos here, but only those imported from your computer.

Oh yeah, and the thing plays music and movies.  True, I haven't tried any movie, although I have watched some videos on the included YouTube app.  Those certainly looked nice.  I have listened to some music on it.  Being an Apple product, it is tied to iTunes.  You must have it on your computer to upload songs to the device.  However, I have found that to be a painless process.  Once on your iPod Touch, you can sort them into playlists, shuffle them, or pick one particular artist or CD to hear in its entirety.  There are speakers on the iPod Touch.  They aren't the best, but you can use them if you want to.  A pair of earbud headphones comes with it, and those sound pretty good for such a small device.

8 gigabytes is the smallest size iPod Touch offered.  8 sounds rather small, but it does hold quite a bit.  It is advertised as holding 1,750 songs, 10 hours of video, or some combination thereof.  Of course, the more apps you download, the less room you have, and a small fraction of the storage space is taken up by software needed to run the thing.  Being a music lover, I can't put everything I have on it, but I can get quite a good selection on at any one time if I so desire.

Before you can use it for the first time, you have to register and set it up via iTunes on your computer.  Apple at work again.  Fortunately, the process was fairly painless.  I think it took me about 20 minutes.  The included USB cable is also the only way to charge the device, so you need your computer handy when you are on the road.  I'm not a fan of this as a whole, but when I am home it works fine.

The battery is advertised as having somewhere between a 30 hour (music) and 6 hour (movies) life between recharges.  I've never timed mine, but I turn it on and off several times turning the day and it usually lasts me several days unless I spend all night playing games on it.

I do have several complaints about the iPod Touch.  Or should I say minor irritants.  The first is that no instruction manual came with it.  There is one bookmarked in Safari and you get enough information to get you that far.  But it would be nice to have more things written out in case you really get stuck.  Also, I find I can still thumb through a book and find what I need faster than I can on-line.  However, I have only needed the manual once.  Everything really is straight forward and logical.  You can figure out what you need it to do by trial and error most of the time.

The iPod Touch doesn't come with a case.  Frankly, I find this rather funny with how sensitive the screen must be and the fact that it comes in one color, a cool silver.  Mine is covered in fingerprints on all sides after just a couple of months.  Yes, you can buy a cover, and I need to look into this, but it would be nice if they included something simple like that.

Besides keeping it clean, it would be nice if there was a way to carry it around easier.  As it is now, you have to hold it or slip it in a pocket.  Again, a case with some kind of clip or belt holder would be ideal.

The advantages far outweigh these few complains, however.  Yes, more storage space would be nice, but I'm just being greedy (especially considering I got it for free).  The iPod Touch is a great all in one if you want a small, portable device for light web surfing, a blackberry, a music player, or some combination of all three.