iPod touch Features

As mentioned on my blog yesterday, I indicated that today I would write a few early observations regarding my new iPod touch. I've read a lot of reviews about "touch", some more favorable than others, but I do have to agree with the reviewers consensus that the screen is, as you would expect, very prone to dust and fingerprints - but it's not all that big a deal - just wipe them off from time to time and move on. After all, it is called the iPod touch...right! You'll see the evidence of this situation, when you view the pictures I posted of my iPod touch to the right and at the bottom of the blog page.

The most important feature of the iPod touch, in my opinion, is it's Wi Fi capability and the Safari browser that controls surfing over the Internet. In a word, it's "great".It is the best browser that I've ever used with a handheld device. There is a slight learning curve to getting use to the keyboard and to "stretching" the web pages to make them larger or smaller, but other than that, it is very intuitive.

The ability to play You Tube videos is a big plus. The one's that I viewed played exceptionally well. I'm a big fan of You Tube, so this was a deal breaker feature for me. I've passed on purchasing other PDA type devices because they could not effectively display videos from You Tube. I also like the synchronization to iTunes and a feature which allows you to use your regular iTunes account to search and purchase videos,pod casts and songs from the Apple iTunes site via Wi Fi. I make purchases from iTunes rather frequently. I don't think that you can do this with the current iPhone. Maybe it will be included with the next generation iPhone that will be announced in January at Mac World. As long as you have access to a Wi Fi connection, you have access to the Internet and since this is a flash player it is almost as full function as a desktop computer. Remember, I said almost. There are attachments and certain java script programs that won't open, but all in all, this is a very versatile device.

In some ways, this little gadget is like a magnet. You'll see it setting on the table and you can't help but think about picking it up to do some quick web surfing (no waiting for Windows to open) or to just run through the menu . The keyboard is good enough to compose emails and the screen displays web pages, photos and videos at a quality that is said to be less than the one on the iPhone (although they have the same size screen), but better than what other similar devices offer.

The fun factor when using the iPod touch is high (that was one of my criteria for making a Christmas purchase) and the quality is better than I expected, especially for the price. I've only had it for one day... but at this point, I give it a thumbs up rating.