Back in the days, where I started this design business, I was not a design student and compared to now, my designs were way suck. I was doing freelance web-design jobs during my days in senior high. During that time, I was a Windows user, until I was enlightened, bought the iMac and never look back to my dreadful past.

The photo above was my first real upgrade, from a Pentium 120MHz PC, to a Pentium III 600MHz PC which I call “Synchro”, and at that time, it was running on Windows 2000. As far as I remember, it had a 256MB RAM, a RIVA TNT2 video card, the “popular” Tornado speakers, and an AOpen AX63Pro motherboard. I think the hard drive was either 10GB or 20GB. It even still have its own external Zip Drive (Note that I still have that drive in my possession, selling it would be pointless as probably no sane person would buy it). As far as I remember, this was one of the early days when cable internet was not as common as it is now, and when LinkNet did not suck. But that is the same website that they have ages ago, until they are now merged with First Media. So in a sense, yes, they do suck.

Here’s another photo of the full rig:

A few days back ago, my trusty Apple Pro Mouse was broken. Not that broken, but it constantly double clicks itself, so yes, I am annoyed. I switched to my iBook’s Logitech mouse for the time being, while I claimed the faulty mouse for a replacement (Apparently it is covered by AppleCare) and while I decide whether to upgrade it or not.

Today, I went to eStore and snatch a wired Mighty Mouse. I figured that a mouse is an investment anyway, and I’ll be using it all the time. I have no complaints with not having a secondary button or scroll on my previous mouse, but I could appreciate the scroll and the pressure-sensitive side buttons on this one as bonuses.

I just finished a personal project which I decided to do in my free time during the holidays. Think of it as my dedication to pro-bono church works. My personal project is the Indonesian version of the Bible. Why? Because I found no Indonesian iPhone/iPod Touch versions of it over the internet, so I decided to make it on my own.

I’ve been using electronic Bibles to reduce my load when going to the church since I used my old Palm Zire 72, and when I moved to the Sony Ericsson K610i afterwards. After I bought the iPod Touch two weeks ago, and got it jailbroken, I figured that with its superb text-rendering capabilities which is far better from my previous gadgets (Thanks to OS X), it can be a good eBook reader with a nice legibility. So why not have a Bible in it?

I’ve set up a dedicated page for it here (which became a reason that I have to spend more time taking care of my personal site) with all of the needed instructions provided. So if you’re an Indonesian, and happened to own an iPhone or an iPod Touch, and needed the bible, feel free to download a copy.

So what’s going on here? I finally broke my own promise to myself not to buy an iPod just yet. As impulsive as it may be, this is because I found out that yesterday, when I was chatting with Andira, there’s a midnight sale at Senayan City’s iBox (I found this out from a friend that’s living in Melbourne. Where the hell was I?), and that the lowest price I could get is Rp. 1,699,000. I thought, hey, why not give it a try? It’s an iPod Touch, and any iPod Touch with that kind of price tag is most likely a good deal, don’t you think?

Then there was I jumped out of my chair and cruising down to Senayan City, in hope that I could snatch the thing with a very good deal. After I arrived, it turns out that there’s a set of terms and conditions applied. Just as I suspected, there’s always a catch. Apparently not all of the purchasable iPods are tagged with a Rp. 1,699,000 price tag. There are several tiers of pricing discounts that you would have to pick (by luck) from a bowl. At this point, I thought why don’t I just try my luck. When the queue reaches to mine, I pulled the tag, rolled inside a cut straw, from the bowl, and I got the Rp. 2,299,000 price tag. I decided to take the iPod anyway. It’s an iPod Touch, 8GB, from a listed price of Rp. 3,199,000. That’s a Rp. 900,000 discount of the shelf price, and chances like this doesn’t exactly come everyday.

Now comes the review. First of all, if any of you bought the iPod Touch and expected that you would get a similar iPod like the Nano or the Classic, then you’ll be disappointed. When you relate the price to capacity ratio and compared the Touch and the Classic, you’ll get what I mean. So, for you who wants to buy the iPod Touch with that kind of perspective, I suggest you skip the idea and buy the Classic without any question. But if you want something more sophisticated than the Nano, and have some extra cash, then go for the iPod Touch. Price-wise, without a discount, it’s rather expensive.

When it comes to playing music, it really does what it’s designed for, and yes, it does worked as advertised. The sound quality is adequate, if not good, it’s responsive, the animations are slick and responds brilliantly to your expectations, or at least, in this case, mine. The YouTube player also performs well, provided that you have a good internet connection. The video player and photo browser also performs nicely. So no complains there. I read that this is actually the iPhone without the phone. Well, it’s true.

As for the other features beside music playing, I would have to say that I’m a bit disappointed with the factory defaults. First of all, by default, although the Contacts allow us to edit the entries, the Calendar does not. Second, while I was testing Meebo with the built-in Safari, the keyboard’s predictive text input is so annoying, and there’s no way to turn it off. Third, as it is a closed-platform, there’s no way for us to install additional applications that might help us to turn the iPod Touch into a PDA replacement. Therefore I decided to jailbreak it.

After the jailbreak, which is an easy procedure from jailbreakme.com, everything was opened before my very eyes. I then downloaded the Calendar patch, and now I can edit my schedules as I go. I also downloaded the patch so that I can disable the predictive text input. So there we go, two of my disappointments cured. I’ve also added the Apollo IM application, but although it can’t completely replace my Adium when I’m not home, that might probably come in handy someday. Let’s just hope one day, Wi-Fi is free on every single mall in Jakarta.

I am a true Apple fan, right from the moment I switched to my beloved iMac a couple years ago, I would never, whenever possible, to go back to any Microsoft shits. But I would have to say that I’m a bit disappointed with the whole closed-platform thing for the iPod Touch/iPhone. From the way I see it, having additional applications could be useful, not to mention to keep the iPod Touch/iPhone above the average smartphone, which are mostly crappy. But nevertheless, turning the iPod Touch into something useful is not something that’s impossible. I’d give it 8.5 out of 10 anyday.

Compared to the Zune? Well, just like Craig Ferguson said, the Zune zucked.

It seems that Erica Sadun of TUAW posted the whole reason for me not to upgrade to Leopard… Yet. I simply can’t risk my productivity over an OS upgrade. Well, patience is a virtue.