For the longest time I was an anti-iPod stalwart in the world of MP3 players.  My first player was a Rio Volt SP150 CD player.  It could play MP3/WMA CDs and recognized folders, so you could actually organize your music.  I then graduated to a dedicated MP3 player, a Rio Chiba with 256MB capacity that I supplemented with a 512MB SD card.  It was a nice player, but you couldn’t organize music well.  You could send playlists, but there was no way on the player itself to just play songs by one artist or album without creating a playlist first.  I lived with that limitation for a couple of years before buying a SanDisk Sansa e260 in 2005.  The Sansa was and still is an excellent player.  Easy to organize your music and play exactly what you want.  Excellent audio quality, and good build quality.  However, for the past six months the Apple iPod Touch has wooed me with its touchscreen and the iTunes App Store.

I decided to wait until September for the iPod refresh to see if any changes were made to the Touch.  There were rumors of a camera and microphone and new internals carried over from the iPhone 3GS.  Those things seemed worth waiting for.

In the meantime, I downloaded iTunes to see what kind of software I’d be stuck with for managing and synching music.  I found iTunes to just be OK.  Overly polished and it ran kind of slow on my Samsung NC10 netbook.  I preferred the speed and layout of Windows Media Player.  Another thing I did in preparation for a potential switch to an iPod was a conversion of my music library.  Some of my older music was in WMA format, having been ripped from CDs in Windows Media Player, which did not include the MP3 codec at the time.  After some research, I found MediaMonkey would convert WMA files to MP3 for a limited time.  I tasked my Sammy netbook with doing this file conversion, which ended up taking nearly 24 hours for all the files I had.  I then used iTunes to correct some of the songs’ tags and download album art.

A deals website had a sale on iPod charging equipment, selling a $30 piece for $5 so I bit.  I then had a cable and charger plug sitting around with no iPod to go with it.

Then came the day I was waiting for in September, the annual iPod refresh event thrown by Apple.  Rumors were pointing strongly at a camera for the Touch, with case samples being shown with a cutout for the camera.  There were even photos of a supposed prototype model with a camera.  I didn’t really care about the camera, but it would have been a nice to have.  The rumor mill also reported possible cameras for the iPod nano and classic.  What I wanted were the faster processor from the iPhone 3GS and the Voice Control feature.  If the new Touch had a mic, that meant I could vocally control the iPod while using it in the car, instead of having to use the touchscreen to skip songs or change the volume.  The iPod refresh event ended up being a huge disappointment for a lot of people.  The only changes to the Touch that took place were a drop in price for the unchanged 8GB model and updated internals for the 32 and 64GB models.  The 8GB Touch was a reasonably-priced $199, whereas the 32GB listed for $299.  That was way more than I wanted to pay.  I was willing to drop $229 for an 8GB or 16GB model with the 3GS internals.  I decided to hold off on buying an iPod Touch.

Fast forward to last week.  The Touch TV commercials and my unused charger continued to tantalize me.  I didn’t want to pay $179-199 for year-old technology on the 8GB Touch.  I looked at eBay for gently used models, but the prices were higher than I wanted to pay for a used unit.  I looked at Apple’s education pricing to see if I could save any money that way.  Nope, no Touch discounts there.  I then saw the link on the Apple Store’s webpage for refurb iPods.  The 2nd Generation 8GB Touch was available for $149 with free shipping.  I looked into this deal.  The refurb Touches get a new battery and outside shell, presumably go through testing, come with all the stuff you would get with a new Touch (data cable, earbuds, dock adapter), and carry a one year warranty, just like a brand new Touch.  I decided this was the way to go.  I would pay $149 for the refurb 2nd Gen Touch and another $5 for the iPhone OS 3.1.1 update.  So for $155, I had basically the exact same thing as the 3rd Gen iPod Touch 8GB that cost about $45 more.  Apple is known for excellent customer support, so I felt safe buying one of their refurbs.

I read online that Apple iPod refurbs shipped in plain brown boxes that said refurb all over them.  That sounded cheesy but appealed to the tightwad in me.  Instead, I got a white box that said iPod on it with the words Apple Certified on top.  I should have known that Apple would come up with better packaging than a brown box.

Inside the box, the Touch is shrinkwrapped to a piece of cardboard.  My Touch looks pretty good.  It actually looks like how I would expect a brand new one to look.  There were no imperfections on the exterior and all the stuff was in the box that was supposed to be there.

My first task was to install the iPhone OS update, and then copy my music over.  It took some experimentation and Help file consultation to figure out how to send only selected songs to the iPod instead of performing the automatic sync that would have sent all my music over.  I then downloaded some apps.  First on my list was Flight Control.  I had so much fun playing that game on the display model at Best Buy.  I also made sure to download Facebook and Twitterific for my social networking needs.  I downloaded the WordPress app, so I guess I technically could have written this on the Touch.  I also got some games like Scrabble (can interface with Facebook), a crossword game, an air hockey game, and a chess game.  The App Store is daunting.  There are so many apps to search through.  I tried to stick with free apps, but a lot of the reviews for free apps are bad, so I guess you get what you pay for.  Someday I will have to just randomly go through the App Store to see if I can find more fun or useful stuff.

I like the touchscreen interface of the Touch.  The screen is quite responsive and the graphics are good.  The interface is fairly intuitive and it is hard to mess anything up.  Audio quality does not seem as good as on my Sansa.  Maybe I just need to experiment with the EQ setting.  The sound is not bad, just not as good as on my Sansa.

Once I added the Touch’s MAC address to my router, it was super easy to connect to my secured wireless network.  I haven’t messed with the Safari browser much yet.

The Touch is a pretty device, but does not seem as robust as my Sansa.  I hit a few stores this weekend to look at cases.  I also looked at Amazon and read reviews for cases I saw there and at the B&M stores I visited.  I was looking for a wallet or folio type case with a flip-cover for the screen.  I don’t care for those hard cases that just cover the back, or those rubbery skins.  Neither cover the screen.  I wanted something that looked business-like and covered all of the iPod.  There was a $22 DLO folio case I liked, but most of the recent reviews complained of construction quality.  After digging around, I found a couple of cases from a company for $5-6 each (folio, flip).  They looked nice, didn’t appear to obstruct the ambient light sensor on the Touch, and got good reviews.  The price was cheap enough that I bought both cases, so I could try both out and use whichever I liked best.  I wasn’t going to use a screen protector, but changed my mind and picked up some screen protectors today.  I liked the texture, which didn’t interfere with sliding my finger on the touchscreen.  However, I didn’t like how the protector made the light from the screen scatter and kind of look dirty, showing the individual pixel colors.  It isn’t too annoying, and protects the screen well, so I’ll live with it.  I didn’t go with the Invisible Shield, which is pretty clear to look through, because you use water or a solution to apply the protector.  There is no way I am going to get my Touch wet at all.  I don’t mind getting a GPS receiver wet to put on an Invisible Shield, but an MP3 player isn’t designed to get wet.

The Touch is shaping up to be a neat MP3 player, Internet device, and gaming device.

Now I will take a look at new bicycles.  Buying an MP3 player and then a new bicycle is not exactly fiscally prudent.  However, I bought the Touch a week before my bicycle unexpectedly disintegrated.  I am in not much of a hurry to replace my bike since I don’t see many more riding days before winter hits.  My five-and-a-half-year-old desktop computer with an untrustworthy hard drive should be replaced soon.  I’m glad I have multiple portable hard drives and my netbook for backing up stuff.  My income tax refund next near will be very welcome.