My beloved iPod touch, Oscar, is going to the Apple Hospital for some emergency surgery. Last night he lost his battle with wi-fi.

I was enjoying a late night browse on Oscar in bed last night when all of a sudden I lost my wi-fi signal. Short drop-outs can happen from time to time so I just waited a few minutes, switched the iPod off and then back on. The wi-fi icon wasn’t in the top left so I went into settings to find the network and join it…but it wasn’t picking up anything, not even my neighbours network which it always puts into my list.

I immediately thought it was a modem issue so I restarted my box. I didn’t think to check my wi-fi on my PowerBook (it was late, I was tired) but it doesn’t hurt to reset the modem occasionally. Once that came back up I still wasn’t able to pick up a thing with Oscar, but no problems at all with wi-fi on my PowerBook, J’s laptop and both our mobile phones. I reset the iPod to see if that would help, but nothing happened. If I stood right close to my modem then one bar would show up next to my network in the list, but it absolutely would not join it, keep throwing the error “unable to join the network” at me. Once I moved away from the modem then it could find no network at all.

I decided to do a factory restore to see if that would sort the issue out, but to no avail. I called Apple Support and within 5 minutes they were sorting out a dispatch note for me and arranging for a courier to come and pick Oscar up within 3 working days to take him away for repair. That was quick and painless, I’m glad to say.

So, I’ll be iPod-less for a little while. This just means that my PowerBook will get more attention when I’m browsing the net in bed as he’s been feeling very left out since the 2.0 software update and apps arrived!

UPDATE: I am not alone, it seems.