A Week(end) on the road with the iPod Touch..

OK, so it’s only ¾ of an iPhone but I’m just a trog so the Touch comfortably fulfills my immediate requirements. I spent the latter part of the week and weekend at a Best Western hotel in York where WiFi is freely available in every room (unlike many rip-off UK hotels who charge the earth for WiFi)

I deliberately didn’t take a laptop and relied soley on the Touch. Google Reader worked great, the feed page resizing properly thanks to google mobile’s version of reader, in fact I think I prefer the mobile version to the regular full size AJAX page, either can be viewed on the Touch.

Gmail was also pretty darned slick using the google mobile version although the regular Gmail interface was also available thanks to the Touch’s ‘pinch and expand’ feature . Better still I was able to respond without dragging out my Bluetooth keyboard that I’ve used with various smartphones (zzzzz)

I also had an eBay auction running over the weekend which I was able to track and view with ease, normally a real fag to view on a smartphone.

I discovered I could listen to various podcasts via Safari though haven’t figure how to do a right click and save yet (technically not possible but only a matter of time.)

And finally, Outlook Web Access displayed as it would do on any laptop without having to revert to Exchanges’s Outlook OMA option. No match for the Blackberry of course but for iPhone users Bluetooth keyboard support is probably on the radar so might be OK for light mail duties.

Although lacking very much in maturity the iPhone and Touch could just be a turning point as the Blackberry culture was (and currently still is). Apple never did promote the iPhone and Touch as a PDA despite what a number of misguided journalists (who never read the label) seem to think, as a mobile device though it’s still pretty funky.