My wonderful wife gave me an iPod Touch for Christmas (the 8 GB variety—good enough for my needs). I've had a great time playing around with it for the last few weeks and have finally decided to start looking into a few accessories for it.
First up is a case. The Touch is a wonderful piece of equipment, but it has a few drawbacks in its industrial design.
The first drawback is that the thing is slick to the touch (er...no pun intended). That metal back looks cool and feels nice, but it is very hard to hold onto. I've dropped the Touch a few times because of this (thankfully, always onto something padded like the carpet or the couch).
The second drawback is that the back is easy to scratch and scuff. It's got fingerprints all over it and a scratch that came from who-knows-where. So, although the front is still in pristine shape, the back doesn't look new anymore after on a few weeks.
I've been looking around for a case but am having a surprisingly hard time finding one. Right after Christmas, none of the stores had any cases, which is understandable, considering the fact that everyone was probably buying those things for Christmas. But, now even as stores are getting cases back in stock, I'm still finding it hard to find a case I like. I don't want a sleeve-style case (which seem incredibly useless and cumbersome to me) and I don't want some wild looking thing (my iPod does not need Zebra stripes). Plus, I want something that will protect the screen when it's in my pocket.
I've only found one case that matches my criteria, the Belkin Leather Folio Case. It has a wraparound front cover and it is has subdued, professional styling. The problem is, the clasp is apparently velcro (and cheap velcro at that) and, according to reviews, the bottom portion of the face is not well designed in that it's too easy to accidently cause the home button to be pushed.
Other than this one case though, I've not been able to find anything else. Is it really so hard to find something like this? Does anyone have any suggestions?
The other "accessory" I've been thinking of is to replace my older clock-radio in my bedroom with one that will work my my Touch. This realm of accessories is even worse than the cases. All I want is a system that has a nice LED display with lit numbers on black, simply conservative styling, ability to charge the iPod, and a decent sounding speaker system.
Apparently such a critter does not exist.
The big name out there in iPod-compatible clock radios is iHome. Problem number one: most of their radios do not have backlit LED displays. Instead, it's the type of display with black LED numbers and the surrounding display is lit. Ugh. But, they do still have some backlit LED models as well. Some of them are very wild looking.
But they DO seem to have the perfect product....that is until you read some of the reviews on Amazon where people talk about this radio just suddenly stops working. In fact, a lot of reviews on Amazon about a lot of iHome products have the same problems: poor quality and mysterious failures.
Looking at other name brands, like Sony, this one again stretches the design aspect a little more than I'm comfortable with and it is apparently a behemoth in size. But it gets great reviews.
I guess I'm just being a little too picky. Wouldn't be the first time. Anyone have any suggestions?
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