Well, gritted my teeth and stumped up the £5.99 to download the iPhone 3.0 software for my iPod Touch. I really feel that I should not have to pay for cut-and-paste and a landscape 'keyboard' (the only things I really want from it over version 2). So how does it perform? Cut-and-paste does what it says on the tin, and does it well, but then it should or course. The landscape keyboard is more interesting. Previously, I held the device in my left hand and stabbed at the software keys with the index or middle finger of my right hand. Now I can hold the Touch in both hands and use both thumbs. Not quite ideal as my thumbs are a little too big, but I can enter text much faster than previously. It puts me in mind of my old Psion series 5, my favourite
PDA of all time. I have also owned an Acorn Pocketbook II (a badged Psion series 3, very good) a Sony Clie (not great) and a Palm Tungsten T3 (not bad). The series 5 was an ideal size, small enough to fit in a jacket pocket but big enough to have a usable keyboard (and I used it, two thumbed, to write many Open University assignments). There is nothing really like it today; modern PDA's, phones etc. are too small for serious text entry and netbooks are too big to stuff in your pocket. As an all round device that can be taken everywhere, the iPod Touch is probably the best option available.
