First impressions are very favourable. The device is reasonably thin (around 8mm), and extremely well built, as you’d expect from Apple. There are only two buttons: the on/off switch on the top edge, and the round ‘home’ button at the bottom of the fascia. Initially I had trouble figuring out how to turn the damn thing off though. Turns out you have to hold down the on/off switch for a bit, then a slider appears on-screen which you have to, er, slide to turn the iPod off.

The screen, as you probably know, responds to touch (hence the minimalist controls compared to standard iPods). In a word: it’s gorgeous (hang on, that’s two words). Bright, with vibrant colours, it’s superb for viewing photos and especially videos. Definitely a fingerprint magnet though.

However, the major triumph (as far as I’m concerned) is the Touch’s user interface, which is both easy to understand and a joy to use. It also looks fantastic: text is easy to read, even at small sizes, and there are graphical flourishes everywhere that bring a smile to your face (then again, I’m a sad geek when it comes to UIs). The on-screen keyboard that appears during text entry is a tad on the small side, but only those with the chubbiest digits would really have any major trouble with it: the rest of us just need to type a bit slower, and avoid using our thumbs!

I do have a few quibbles though. The Touch automatically locks itself and switches off the screen after a certain period of time: this delay is configurable in the UI, but obviously the longer the delay the more you’ll eat into the battery life. I don’t have an issue with this locking per se, however as there are no external buttons for controlling the volume, pausing or changing tracks, this has to be done using the relevant on-screen controls. What’s not immediately obvious is that you can double-tap the home button to overlay volume and transport controls on the current screen, and this works even when the Touch is locked so at least you don’t have to ’slide to unlock’ first. Regardless, it’s still not as convenient as hardware controls (you have to be able to see the screen for one thing), and I’m sure Apple will fix it in future hardware revisions (after all, even the iPhone has a volume control button).

My other issues are with the firmware, and are much more annoying. First, browsing albums doesn’t work properly if several albums share the same name, even if those albums are by different artists. Think “Greatest Hits” albums, for example. The net effect is that only one of the albums will appear in coverflow, but this one album will include tracks from the other albums having the same name. So if your iTunes library contained “Greatest Hits” by Queen and “Greatest Hits” by the Bangles (yeah, okay, stop sniggering at the back), then only the Queen album would appear in coverflow: tap it, and the track listing would show all of the Bangles “Greatest Hits” tracks as well as the Queen ones. This bug (and I do consider it a bug) also affects iTunes, but can be worked-around to some extent by using the album sort tags. Unfortunately, these tags seem to be ignored on the Touch, hence the only practical solution is to rename the album itself so that it is then unique. At the moment I’m adding the artist name to the end of the album title, like so: “Greatest Hits [Queen]“. Very clumsy.

My second gripe concerns compilation albums (why does so much hardware and software have trouble dealing with these?). In iTunes, you can tag a track as belonging to a compilation album. When viewing a list of artists on the iPod, those who have only contributed to compilation albums are not supposed to appear in the list, thus stopping those ‘one-hit wonders’ from cluttering things up. However, on the Touch this feature is broken, and the artists list contains everybody. I mean, I’ve got Acker Bilk in my artists list for crying out loud, just because he performed one poxy track on an ‘oldies’ compilation. Again, I consider it a bug because the other iPod models (eg. the latest Classic and Nano) don’t do this. As a workaround, I’m using the ’sort artist’ tag in iTunes to group all such artists together at the end of the artists list on the iPod: still in the list unfortunately, but at least they’re not interspersed with everyone else.

There are rumours of an iPod Touch firmware upgrade being released to coincide with Macworld Expo next week, and I sincerely hope these two issues get sorted. Okay, they’re minor issues in the grand scheme of things, and it seems a little churlish to complain about them when the rest of the device is so fantastic, but hey, there’s always room for improvement, right?

* maybe ‘hate’ is too strong a word, but “it’s a love-minor quibbles thing” doesn’t have the same ring to it
** well, technically it’s last year now

For the uninitiated, Sonos (or the Sonos Digital Music System, to give it its full title) is a set of components that let you stream digital audio around your home. There are basically two bits of hardware: ZonePlayers, that actually play the music through an attached amplifier or pair of speakers; and Controllers, paperback-sized bricks with a scroll wheel and colour LCD screen that are used to choose what the ZonePlayers should be playing. The Controllers are supposedly optional, in that each ZonePlayer comes with software you can install on a PC or Mac that will replicate the functionality of the Controller, thus allowing you to control the ZonePlayers via your computer. In reality, one of the main attractions of the system is in using the hardware Controller to browse through and play your music collection. I doubt many people end-up buying a system without a Controller.

Up to 32 ZonePlayers can be ‘connected’ to each other via wired or wireless ethernet, and then controlled via a single Controller. Each ZonePlayer (referred to as a ‘zone’) can play a different track, or individual zones can be linked such that they play the same track. So you could have two ZonePlayers, one in the lounge and the other in the bedroom for example, both playing the same song, in perfect sync with each other.

Sonos recently started selling a ‘BU130 bundle’ containing two different ZonePlayers and a Controller, and also reduced their prices, so I figured that now was the time to take the plunge. One of the ZonePlayers in the bundle is the amp-less model, so I also ordered a pair of bookshelf speakers (Q Acoustic 1010s) to go with it.

A couple of days later, a fairly hefty box arrived. This contained both of the ZonePlayers (a ZP80 and its larger ZP100 sibling) and the Controller, together with the Desktop Controller software on CD and a number of connecting cables. Unpacking the devices, I was surprised how heavy the ZP100 was, probably due to the built-in amplifier. I should also state that both units have enclosed PSUs, so there are no power bricks to worry about. Added to that they’re passively cooled, so are almost silent in operation (I’ve noticed that the ZP100 makes a slight hum constantly, but this is barely audible most of the time).

First to be hooked-up was the smaller ZP80. We already had a Denon mini system in the lounge, so the ZP80 was connected to it via the RCA jacks (the ZP80 does have digital outputs, but the Denon doesn’t so I couldn’t make use of them). Although Sonos can operate wirelessly, our house is already wired with Cat5 cable, so I hooked the ZP80 directly to a nearby network socket.

The Controller has an enclosed rechargeable battery that first needed charging via the supplied power brick (a charging cradle is also available, but the price is a bit steep in my opinion). Once charged, the Controller software walks you through the setup process, part of which involves associating the Controller with the ZonePlayer by pressing a couple of buttons on the fascia of the player.

After the Controller/ZonePlayer association has been established, you need to tell the system where your music files are located. In our case, we recently bought an Infrant ReadyNAS box which we basically treat as a huge fileserver, and all of our music files are stored on it. I used the Controller to select the appropriate file share, then the system built an index from the metadata (tags) in the music files. Once the index has been built, the Controller can display the music files in your collection, grouped by artist, album, genre or whatever, allowing you to choose the tracks that you want to play.

The Controller interface is pretty slick. Most screens present a simple list of items to choose from; you use the scroll wheel to move through them, and the centre button to select. There are also three ‘context-sensitive’ buttons located below the screen, the functions of which change depending on where you are in the UI, plus dedicated buttons for selecting zones and accessing the music ‘library’. It’s all a breeze to use; anyone who’s ever owned an iPod will feel right at home.

A day later the dinky 1010s arrived, so I was able to hook-up the ZP100. I decided to put it in one of the bedrooms upstairs, so that we’d have a zone on each floor of the house. Again, it was simply a matter of connecting everything together, using the Controller to indicate that a new player was being added to the system, then pressing the two buttons on the fascia of the ZonePlayer. A couple of minutes later and – hey presto, we now had two zones! However, it was at this point that things went a bit pear-shaped.

The software on the ZonePlayers and the Controllers is stored in firmware, allowing it to be remotely upgraded over the internet whenever Sonos release a new version. When our hardware arrived it appeared to be a couple of revisions behind, and part-way through the setup process I was offered the option of upgrading to the latest firmware. This upgrade had worked fine the previous day on the Controller and the ZP80, however attempting the same on the ZP100 failed big-time. The ZP100 froze during the process, and wouldn’t respond to the Controller. In the end, the only way I could get the system back up-and-running was to power-down everything on the network (router, laptop, NAS, Sonos boxes), then bring everything back online one device at a time. This seemed to do the trick, and (fingers crossed) both ZonePlayers have performed flawlessly since.

Unfortunately, we also experienced a hardware glitch with the Controller. The unit has a built-in sensor that detects the level of ambient lighting and automatically backlights the buttons if it gets too dark. A nice feature, but on our particular Controller some of the buttons were always backlit, and flickered to boot (none of this stopped us from using the Controller however). After initially ringing the supplier (Simply Sonos), I was asked to ring Sonos technical support, who diagnosed a faulty unit and gave me a return code. I passed this information on to Simply Sonos, who immediately sent out a replacement Controller: we posted the broken one back to them. Everything was handled promptly and professionally.

After using the Sonos system for a couple of months, I can honestly say it’s a great piece of kit: rock solid (despite our initial niggles with the software upgrade and Controller hardware), well designed, and very easy to use. I was a little dubious about the multiple zone thing given that we only live in a small detached house, but it really is quite cool to be able to walk from one floor to another with the same song playing in the background. I was also impressed by the quality of the after-sales support, and there’s a really helpful user community in the Sonos website forums too.

All in all, heartily recommended. Now all that remains for me to do is to finish digitising our CD collection…! 

We ended-up buying the Giga Pack from HMV: black PSP, 1GB Memory Stick, in-ear headphones with remote control, plus two games, Daxter and Loco Roco, all for just over 200 notes. I also got Wipeout Pure as well, not wanting to break with tradition (I bought the original Wipeout when I got my first PlayStation, then Wipeout Fusion when the PS2 came out).

Initial impressions of the console are positive. The design of the unit is very sleek, as you would expect from Sony. The standard navigational UI (used to change settings, launch games, etc) is simple but looks sexy, and the LCD screen is fantastic. Battery life could be better, lasting around three hours before needing a recharge, but overall it’s a great little package.

And what of the games? I’d heard good things about Loco Roco, and it doesn’t disappoint, being a very original puzzler/platformer. I can’t get Paula to stop playing it! Wipeout Pure reminds me of the 2097 version (the best), which was apparently one of the game’s design goals. I’m having a little trouble with the difficulty level, although that’s probably due to my general rustiness with the old D-pad. As for Daxter, HMV didn’t have any in-stock at the time, so that’s still on back-order.

I haven’t watched any UMD movies yet, and to be honest I don’t think I’ll bother buying any. I just don’t see the point of watching a two-hour film on that tiny screen. I’ve also yet to look into viewing photos or playing music on the machine, as I haven’t really had the time. Maybe when work on the house settles down a bit!