Good things happened aside from doing the Ellen dance when finally getting my iPod Touch, someone at Walmart did me a solid. Really. Grandma’s Christmas money was well spent this year. If the iPhone is the equivalent of the communicator then the iPod is the tricorder. As some ask what is it? And why would you want it if it isn’t a phone? These days there are more ways to talk than just by cell and land line. It should have been marketed as “The iPhone Wifi” vs the “iPhone 3G or Cellular”. How you communicate depends on where you are at. And your iPod knows where you are too.

Truely the Touch is a device that should get a lot more love. If you have routine access to wifi it can be used as a VoIP phone. Regular Skype fees and rules apply. The app,  short for Application works smoothly and is a breeze to download and install from the App store. As a tool it will do everything for me from helping to figure out if the new sub-floor in the laundry room is level, to assisting me in planning menus for the week. It will tell me if anyone is Tweeting withing 5 miles of me, and it will determine where any wifi hotspots are while I walk the dog.

At first my fingers tried to treat the touch screen like a DS. but the feel of it is quite different and much more sophisticated. Long nails are a no go unlike the Japanese shojo oriented DS. The quick glide is effortless and there’s no friction to kick up the wicked gamers arthritis in my hands.

Ok, ok, no it isn’t entirely a love story. We went online 12/26 to find the cheapest iPods in our area. Which was Walmart. They were out of stock online, but it said available in store only. The 32G 3rd generation iPod Touch was going for $269.00 and the 8G was also listed as “in store only” for $183.00. The 8gig iPod touch apparently is a second generation iPod with the update to the 3.0 software, making it a close out item. A 3rd generation – ish iPod Touch.

When we got to Walmart though they were priced differently. After a short conversation with manager “Nick” we actually got Walmart to give us our iPods at the price which they were advertised. I had them over a barrel when I showed them Best Buy with iPods in the same price range.

Having past that hurdle we went on to the next step at home. I had all ready downloaded the PDF of the manual and read it Christmas night. Yes, that is what geeks do. The 8 gig synched and worked out fine. Music on that one is only about 1 gig and it will mainly be used for apps and games. The 32 gig has 7 gigs of music on it and three e-book readers. But in the course of picking up some movie geek apps for the 32 gig we ran into some problems. Shortly after down loading the IMdb app none of the apps on the 32 gig worked. They all quit on start up. It turns out that not every app is optimized for the iPhone / iPod Touch 3.0 software. Quickly resetting and re-synching it worked it out immediately.

Then there is charging. The only way to do it so far, is to plug it into the iMac, when it is on. Not the keyboard. Not when it is sleeping, or running on low energy settings. The first night I just plugged it into my somewhat antique iBook thinking, ok it will charge over night. Nothing doing. I knew enough not to open the old iBook with the iPod plugged in because that ancient version of iTunes was sure to crash like a MoFo if I did. The second night we shut off the iMac plugged in the 8g and went to bed. Got up to find a dead battery yet again. So far, not so good. I’m expecting the Power Mat to come in for review any time now. I am hesitant to try plugging the iPod into my MSI Wind Windows machine. Call me superstitious or just wary of OSX and XP iTunes incompatibilities. Jobs and Gates may be getting along better in their old age but that doesn’t mean I have to believe.

The 32g needed charging after two days of use, since mine the 8g was being used constantly to try one app after another, and the other was being used mainly to listen to tunes, which takes less juice. However after synching the 32g iPod it had all of my apps on it too. Now my partner was treated to things like WiFi Get, iHandy Level, and Princess Ai. We really need to read the rest of the manual, because my partners iPod is full of manga! It was worth the laugh though.

Over many years of buying Apple products it seems like they revel in selling you things with no instructions. As if to imply that everything they make is self explanatory. Yes, the ease of use is there, and the manual is on the hard drive. You actually can fudge your way along with any Mac without having a clue lots easier than with Windows any day.

It’s true that now that I have it I don’t know how I lived without it before. The way I look at it, it’s a way to have an Apple computer for $200. Why are people waiting around for an “Apple Tablet” including us, when here it is right here. It has an awkwardly long name. Luckily that marketing miss-step hasn’t killed it.

In fact the App Store with around 80,00 different apps in it is a software revolution. The apps like Photobucket and Tweet Deck are sleek, elegantly designed and useful. It puts the browsers to shame. It even makes YouTube look good. The apps take the Internet, simplify the information, and make it functional and easy to use. Your weather, schedule, videos, photos, websites and thousands of other possibilities.

No it isn’t a phone. Yes it is. The iPod Touch is really a WiFi Phone but Apple being in bed with AT&T right now can’t really come out and say that. If it isn’t a phone then how is it that we are video phoning to one from the PC or voice chatting on it with the iPod headphones and microphone?

The sound, even on music videos from You Tube and iTunes were dramatically improved over listening to them on the iPod classic. Or when using the set of Gummie ear buds on the MSI Wind. I could hear bass lines in Skandal’s Shojo S and in Chii’s Theme from Chobits, that I had never heard before. All in all the Christmas iPod experience was pretty sweet. Even at Walmart. Xmas spirit is alive and well somehow.

I’m looking forward to reviewing games on the things of course as well, so bring them on. I give the iPod Touch 3rd Generation 9 happy bouncing icons out of 10.