I returned home late last night and had a mysterious FedEx box on my door.  I hadn’t remembered ordering anything so when I opened it up – I was pleasantly surprised by my free 8gb iPod Touch had arrived!

I had signed up for Key Bank’s free iPod with the opening of a new account about 3 months ago.  Deal was, if you opened a business account by making the initial required opening deposit and keep the account in good standing for 3 months (meaning: 2 automated payroll deposits and 1 ATM card use), you got a free iPod Touch.  Well, my 3rd month wasn’t supposed to end until Oct 30th, but it looks like they went by opening date instead.

Few impressions:

1. The thing instantly gets finger-printy and the back scratches just by looking at it.  You find yourself cleaning it a lot.  Looks like a protector of some sort will be required.
2. I don’t really like iTunes.
   1. Friggen slow – why is the iTunes interface so slow.  I can only take 15 minute doses then go do something else.  Browsing is a pain due to speed.
   2. No no no!  Why do I have to enter a credit card number just to use my iTouch???  I couldn’t use my iTouch without the iTunes software.  I can’t install iTunes without an account on the store.  I can’t create an account on the store without a credit card number.  So, I can’t use my iTouch device without giving Apple my credit card number.  I don’t like that.  There is no reason for them to need that.  I can’t even just browse around for free or just use my device.  That’s not cool with me.  I’m looking for alternatives software now.
   3. Getting existing music on the iTouch is a pain. All I wanted to do was drop my existing mp3 collection onto the device, and it took me a long time to figure out how (you have to add your music to the ‘library’ then you can click and drag).  I have my music ripped to mp3’s – and arranged in folders by artist/album.  When you drop it into iTunes – it looses all that sorting.  Some of my mp3’s didn’t get artist/album/album art info on it.  So now I have to either enter that myself for all my songs, or just live with lost of ‘unknown artist’.  My iRiver is just a usb stick that I plug in and drag and drop files.  Thats what I want.
   4. App store works good.  I like the app store – some really great free stuff in there.  I already have an idea for 2 apps I want to write.  I’m downloading the SDK right now…
      1. Pandora is worth the price of admission alone.  If you can find free wireless, you have free streaming internet radio.
      2. A good number of the apps are pretty mediocre/low quality right now. There is a lot of untapped potential.
      3. None of calculators are very good – overly nerdy or not feature rich.  Shesh – this should be easy to fix…
      4. Conversion tools,
3. Sync works pretty well – just plug in and sync.  Not so sure about the ‘register my computer’ bits though.  At least you can unregister easily.
4. Free is the right price:  I wouldn’t have paid $225 for this device.  There are simply too many other good mp3 players out there for 1/4 the price.  That and I usually use my mp3 player for exercising – and the touch is too big (and too nice) for that.
5. Podcast subscription features are nicely integrated.
6. Internet anywhere ROCKS. Yes – this thing does great with picking up and using wireless networks. I think I’m going to be bringing this with me a lot of different places…