It has just gotten worse, by getting so much better. A month ago, I was panting over the new Apple Macbook Pro with its multitouch trackpad, fast dual processor and beautiful LED screen. This month, I caught myself on.

The Macbook holds no utility for me, though it would undoubtedly make my life richer, more exciting and more interesting. It’d also help me lose weight by right of the reduction in Taschengeld for cookies and bottles of ice tea.

No, I decided to grab myself the iPod Touch. The 32gb one, costing, as eny fule kno, approximately as much as a house in Liverpool (well, if house prices keep going the way they are). Now, let me tell you about the iPod Touch.

First of all, it is beautiful; that’s a given, everyone knows it’s a fantastic piece of kit. It’s currently sheathed in a relatively inexpensive black silicone case, partially to protect it, partially to mask it, and make it less obvious to the casual thief what it is. If it looks enough like a normal cheap MP3 player, perhaps I’ll get away with owning it for more than three months.

Anyway, it’s gorgeous. The screen is slick beyond belief; the lightest of fingertaps unlock the device and prepare it for use. The interface we know from a million iPhone reviews, but it seems just a little more responsive than the iPhones I’ve played with. It feels lightning fast, and responsive in the way some of my older Windows Mobile devices were. It races along, keeping pace with the imagination of the user; sometimes it feels almost like it anticipates my next move.

In a Wifi environment, it automatically and seemlessly connects, updating my IMAP email folders instantly, and handling email sends perfectly; it opens and displays Word documents perfectly, and effortlessly displays PDF documents in full glory.

Add to all that, that Jailbreaking the device (allowing third party stuff to be installed on it) was as easy as running iTunes, and it all adds up to the currently perfect portable device.

Do I wish i had bought the iPhone? Not really, though 3G on this thing will be astounding and wonderful. I am relatively certain, though, that I will be able to recoup a few quid on this rather super device when it comes to launch day for iPhone 2; enough to offset the cost, anyway…