Is the new iPod Touch worth it?

I bought one for my girlfriend last year for her birthday. She loves it, everything about it, except for iTunes. :-) The device itself is super slick, and it performs really well. While I agree with some critics that an external volume control would be nice, ultimately it's a well designed unit. With the additional apps available now to really make it an iPhone without the phone, it's worth the money, at least to me.

For the record: not an Apple fanboy at all.

When the iPod touch was first announced, I got excited. I don't need a new cell phone, and I spend much less on the one I have compared to most people I know. However, it didn't take me long to realize that the iPod Touch was far less than the iPhone without the phone. That being said, each of the pieces that were missing have started to fall into place. I'm also seriously considering one now that the applications are close to parity with the iPhone. Ars Technica says that the iPod Touch will be supported by the iPhone SDK.

I almost bought one pre-MacWorld '08 for my wife because she's a light media user compared to me, the 16GB would cry when it saw my 80GB collection, but what ultimately prevented the purchase was the inability to add events. Now with the $20 update it's back on the table as a gift, though the $400 price tag seems just a little steep. Of course now I'm in trouble because I showed her how I could sync her episodes of 'Oprah' to my Zune and she'd lose that with the Touch.

I love the new Maps feature but then again the places where I'd actually need a map probably don't have any open Wifi spots. Heck, as people start learning how bad open Wifi is everyone is clamping down, even the free local wifi coffee shops have started using WEP, with the password free for anyone buying a coffee.

I'm torn on the Touch. Personally I feel if you're looking just for media playback there are better options but if you also need some PDA action, you're not a heavy media user, you have the dosh AND you have access to a lot of open Wifi then it's just about perfect. I think it has the best picture viewer out there and if you keep a calendar it's great.

There is an issue when using the ITouch as an expensive memory stick.

With an 8GB IPod Nano I have been able to run a VM of my Delphi development enviroment suprisingly well. After some tweeking of the vmx file. Quite cool when you turn up at the client site to present the latest changes.

The IPod Touch doesnt work in the same way. The best I've been able to do to date is apply the Jailbreak crack and install Sftp service. Then on the Windows PC use a product called SftpDrive. But this solution is not fast or 100% fault free.