My Cowon U2 mp3 player has served me excellently over the past several years and, while it still works perfectly, I have been looking to upgrade. This is partly due to its paltry 1GB of storage, and partly because the inclusion of both video playback and wifi web surfing on new high-end portable media players is very enticing. For the past year I have been eyeing up Cowon's feature-packed Q5W. However it is not without its drawbacks: running Windows CE5 allows for office documents to be read, but also means the whole touch screen interface is somewhat sluggish; battery life is on the low side because of the hard drive; and the web browser is still a bit clunky.

As a result I found myself seriously considering the iPod Touch (the first Apple device I have openly praised), particularly once the 2nd gen model wisely added an external volume control. My chief concern has always been the iTunes lock-in because I detest the bloated resource hog. A quick trial of the latest version did nothing to change my mind but, particularly after experiencing just how fast and responsive the Touch's interface is, I was still torn. All that remained was to compare the sound quality, which meant loading my old player with a few of Apple's sample songs and taking to an Apple store. Disappointingly, the iPod came nowhere near the 4-year-old Cowon. Its limited sound options essentially consisted of a volume control and a bunch of preset equalisers with a scarcely noticeable effect, all leaving the music sounding flat and lifeless with compression. In the end it turned out the choice was an easy one. Having come so close to winning me over, this really just serves to cement Apple's recent devices and wonderful shiny gadgets that fail spectacularly at their chief function — the iPhone as a phone that can't make calls or text, and the iPod Touch as a music player that can't play music.

Let's hope the promising looking Archos 5 does better…

Twitter is one of those things that sounded quite interesting but didn't really serve any purpose in my digital life. This three consecutive days stretch notwithstanding, I am aware that my posts have become somewhat erratic and your clamour for more regular updates has not gone unnoticed. Here twitter provides a compromise. In the sidebar you will now see a twitter section which allows for short and sweet updates with whatever I happen to be doing. It's pretty self-explanatory and I will endeavour to keep that updated even when full posts are not possible. That way you can still read what I'm up to, and the eagle eyed will probably find it offers some insight as to what future posts may be about.

Google Reader has been my chosen feed reader for some time now, and they have recently added a new feature to share items with friends which show up separately in the interface. Currently I don't really share many posts as you'll see if you take a look at the P-2006 Shared News feed on our Feeds page. However if anyone else uses Google Reader and would like to make better use of this new feature to share interesting stuff, give me a shout.

Having been uncharacteristically positive about the iPod Touch (I wouldn't buy one, but I would say it's genuinely one of the best portable media players on the market), I do need to weigh in on the MacBook Air, the latest must-have for Apple fans, if only to redress the balance. It is stunningly thin, there is no question. Yet despite its high price this is the least powerful MacBook on the market. Now it's certainly true that if you're looking at an "ultraportable" power is presumably a lesser concern, but I would strongly question its portability in practice. You see, to make it so slim they had to remove the optical disc drive, replacing it with an external unit. So this lovely sleek machine cannot use CDs or DVDs unless you lug around an entire extra drive unit with you. For portability that surely must be a deal breaker. The end result is a laptop that resembles a size zero model: incredibly thin and there is a prettiness there, but somehow you can't escape the fact it's utterly useless.