Sunday, May 23, 2010

Ipod touch and Skype

Well, I bit the bullet after foing a whole lot of research and bought an ipod touch third generation (the 32gb model (strange to think that 32gb is in silicon now!)). My first impressions are as follows:

The skype app is beautiful. It integrates nicely with contacts, no more kludgy skype phone numbers (I always hated the feature of skype that doesn’t let me type in first and last names!) The ipod version just 'works' with contacts, I choose them and hit 'call'. Nice to have 'saved' phone numbers, but I also like being able to search by name. Which is another cool feature of the skype app, has 'a' b c in the skype contacts window!

The wifi 'just works' once you get WDS setup with a pair of airports (My apartment had spotty reception, having two airports made a HUGE difference.) The airpors were a little tricky to setup, but the apple guy got me working in < 1 hour (Normal linux WDS takes FOREVER with WDS!!).

Battery life is a little low, skype pounds the HELL out of the battery. Probably not apple's fault. I think I will be getting one of those external battery thingies. Talking for about 2 hours seems O.K. But it needs FULL recharge after that.

ITs USELESS as a primary phone for incoming calls due to inability to 'ring' with headphones plugged it. So I just leave my old phone there for incoming calls, and 'turn on' the touch by the third ring things work great. I should mention that I have an skype 'appliance' which is very old, but faithful.

Due to having the existing unit, I simply use the old phone for 'incoming' calls, or turn on the ipod touch when I hear the other phone, and pick up then.

I also HATED using the on-screen keyboard, for typing in my horrid long WPA2 passphrase on the IPOD it took FOREVER to get it right.

Overall, however, for outgoing calls that don't piss me off, and for having 'way coolness' factor for things like being able to remotely control my x10 stuff, insteon stuff, as well as having a VERY nice pandora/air1 app thingy for listening I love it. Tomorrow I will try my bose headphones with the built in mike to see if it works. Otherwise I will get the amazon mike that works with 'normal' head phones. Thee sound quality was quite good. Watching videos is RAD. It has beautiful (a little dim), pictures, and doesn't slow down at ALL.

Finally, evernote is cool. I LOVE evernote, and the 'offline' option finally gives me 'portable' evernote WITHOUT having to pay ridiculous charges for data links! I guess if I tried to enter notes into evernote with the ipod I would be mad, but since I really, really, hate the on screen keyboard, I don't think I will be putting too much in evernote via the ipod. I also like the 'just works' backup (I won't say why, but I got to use the 'restore' fuction today due to some stupidity on my part). Worked great. Pretty fast as well. I thought I would hate itunes, but its not too bad for the apps. Not really feeling the need to 'jailbreak' it. Looks like there are plenty of stuff to download.