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Pablo Cheesecake and the iPod Conundrum

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iPod Touch hacked in Apple StoreImage by Nelson Wu via Flickr

A number of years ago I bought the first generation iPod. I was excited by the hype and looked forward to having a decent MP3 player. For me, unfortunately, it just didn’t deliver. The control wheel was fiddly and if, like me, you have fingers like sausages it was near impossible to control. The whole experience left me apathetic toward Apple and their products.

I spent a number of years in the musical wilderness using a Sony MP3 player. It wasn’t bad but then again it wasn’t great either. Sony had their own proprietary file format at the time so it made maintaining my music collection a bit of a pain in the arse. I am essentially lazy and one thing I cannot abide is things being a faff.

About six months ago I decided to give iTunes another go. Things had moved on a lot in my absence and the software impressed me with it’s ease of use. Quickly it became a favourite and my catalogue of MP3s eventually found themselves a new home.

After much umming and ahhing about it I decided I would risk a new MP3 player. I was using iTunes so an iPod seemed the logical choice. this is were I hit my first snag. So many fuckin flavours. Classic, Touch, Nano, Shuffle. So many colours. Sizes a plenty. What is a boy to do?

I went back to the drawing board and tried to put together a list of criteria. What did I actually need my MP3 player for.

  • Music – Well Duh! no brainer there. Thinking about it however I did realise that my collection actually wasn’t that big. To be honest I haven’t but any new music for a long time as my musically tastes are firmly rooted in the past.
  • Additional Tech – Did I need to be able to watch video? Maybe. Did I need access to the web? There was a good chance!

It quickly became evident that a second gen 8GB iPod Touch would do the business.

I’ve had it for just over a week and I have to say I am impressed. The MP3 functions work seamlessly with iTunes. The web browser and apps available from the app store are all good.

Now I’m not gonna get evangelical about Apple. Like I said I was burnt in the past but so far so good. I like the Touch because it just works. I delivers and does exactly what it says on the tin.

Knowing me in six months there will be something else that seems more appealing but for the moment I’ll enjoy my new toy. I will have to try and stop playing with it every five minutes cause there is a good chance I could end up going blind.

Cheerio from deep within gadget nirvana

Cheesecake Away!

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Pablo Cheesecake and the Sony eReader

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For Christmas I convinced the vast majority of my relatives to get my book tokens. I am an avid reader to everyone knew that they would be appreciated. Rather than buying a book however I decided to take a leap into the twenty first century and purchase one of the new eReader’s from Sony

Sony eReaderI have to say, after using it for three months now, that I am impressed for the most part. Over the next few paragraphs I’ll give you my impressions of this interesting little bit of kit.

The Reader – Same size as your average paperback. Thinking about it probably weighs about the same as well. I’ve found that when reading though there are number of buttons to access the various menus and search functions I tend just to use forward and back.

The Software – The goods news is that Sony seem to have learned from previous mistakes on this one. I have had mp3 players from Sony in the past and the big let down for me has been the software package used to manage tracks. The eReader can handle multiple file formats as well as audio and pictures so the eLibrary needed to be simple yet robust enough to copy. Now I’m not saying that it’s attractive link the sort of stuff you get from Apple but the software does do the job. So far no gripes.

The Verdict – I suppose the I only have two minor complaints with the reader. One is that the tactile sensation when turning a page is missing. Now I know that might sound a bit wanky but I have also enjoyed that as part of reading. Secondly no wi-fi capability. Unfortunately I think this second point will direct a lot of potential users towards the Kindle when it is launched in the UK. Its a shame because overall the eReader is a nice little bit of tech.

What Next? – Well if i was Sony I would look into colour in a big way. If you are going to include the capacity for pics then there has to be a colour option. I think increasing the internal hard disk to 4-8GB rather than 200MB might be an idea as well. If they want people to use this to replace their mp3 player as well as traditional books then more storage is required as standard.

Until next time

Laters