
Last summer my Creative Zen player died while I was trying to disassemble it. To be honest I have to tell you that I was very happy with the Creative player and my opinion about it couldn’t be better. So, this disappointed me a bit. However I also put my eye on the incoming new generation of iPods last year when the time to buy a new player came this Christmas.
If I was about to spend a considerable part of my income in a portable media player I wanted not to regret when some time had passed. This way I decided to buy an iPod, since the current alternatives of Creative doesn’t measure up to the Apple players, although I didn’t know which one I would finally choose.
As you already know I finally bought an iPod Touch.
Considerations
I didn’t use to pack the Creative Zen with tons of music; I preferred to keep my music collection in the computer and change the songs on the go. So, capacity wasn’t an issue for me. Furthermore I took into account some other considerations as the Internet browser through the wi-fi connection or the touch screen.
Another things that made me hesitate about buying it or not was the fact that I preferred an smartphone better than carrying separate gadgets. However patience is not one of my strongest virtues so I wouldn’t wait the iPhone 3G nor would buy an iPhone via ebay (with all the risks it involve).
Comparing the specs of the iPhone and any other mobile phone in the market, the iPhone looks a little outdated. In addition, I’m renewing my mobile phone in short time for free, so if one day I finally own the Apple mobile phone it would be in the future when a newer version appears.
Jailbreak and Apps
Once I got the iPod Touch I wanted to jailbreak it so that I could enjoy the most possibilities of such device. It was an extremely-easy process that I completed following this perfectly explained guide the guys of Touchdev had written.
With a jailbroken iPod Touch it was the time to download and test apps. Many of them didn’t pass the selection but I found some of them very useful, even essential (although I didn’t install all):
- OpenSSH: SSH server in your device.
- Mobile Scrobbler: Last.FM in your pocket everywhere.
- Community Sources: A repository for tons of applications.
- BSD Subsystem: All the UNIX power in your iPod Touch.
- Touch Calendar Fix: In order to be able to add event in the Calendar App.
- ScreenShot: The easy way for taking screenshots of your iPod Touch.
- Term-vt100: Term + UNIX = You know…
- Apache Web Server: Very useful to host PDF’s and read eBooks.
- PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby: Support to almost any programming language.
- iPhone Apps: Google Maps, Mail, Notes, Stocks, Weather…
Usage
Some people can’t live without music and have their player always on and their headphones in their ears everytime. However I don’t do a very-hard usage of the player, and it completely fulfills all my needs. Certainly I spend most of the time surfing the Internet or watching videos, so the battery runs out after a couple of hours. However with the wi-fi turned off and only listening to music it lasts the whole day. On the other hand it charges up very quickly.
Another disappointing aspect is the fact that after some use it gets full of fingerprints and you must clean it with the provided polishing cloth.
My opinion
Video player, Internet browser, Photo Gallery, PDA… and it can even play mp3! I totally recommend this gadget. Despite the screen size for surfing and the short battery I couldn’t have done a better buy.
Of course, one of the reviews that moved me to buy the iPod Touch was the Microsiervos review which explains it everything much better than me and probably will also convince you.