This is, of course, my replacement iPod touch after the wi-fi and battery issues my 11 month old iPod experienced last week. It was hard to come up with a new name for a new iPod touch, given that Oscar was my favourite name. However, I decided to go for Rafa, named after the absolutely scrumptiously hot, sexy, good looking talented tennis player Rafael Nadal who gets Rafa for short. I don’t make a habit of naming my computers or gadgets, infact my iPod touch was my first inanimate object to be named.

UPS took the old unit away last Friday and on Monday I received an e-mail from Apple letting me know they’d received it in their repair centre and were about to diagnose the problem. Within an hour of receiving that e-mail I checked the repair status page and it had moved from ‘Diagnosing’ to ‘Issue identified’. About half an hour after that it moved to Step 3 which was ‘Replacement Product Pending’.

On Tuesday the iPod was shipped and should have arrived yesterday, but due to UPS going to the wrong address I had to wait until late this afternoon for the delivery. It arrived in a spongy box and a letter accompanying the iPod explained that I will get 90 days warranty with this new unit. It also said that it could be brand new or a refurb unit. It looks brand new and had the distinctive Apple whiff, although that’s thanks to the plastic it was wrapped in I guess. Either way it works fine with a strong wi-fi signal – just hoping the battery life on this one will exceed that of Oscar.

Much to my surprise I did not miss the iPod touch at all over the past week. I’ve had it back a few hours and all I’ve done so far is sync a few songs across, some applications and my MobileMe details – now he sits in his dock with me feeling very “meh” about it. Maybe we’ll start to bond after a few days, but it’s taught me that I’m all about my iMac and PowerBook more than I am a handheld ‘computer’. Maybe that realisation will have a big impact on my future decision regarding the iPhone.

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.