So, having learned that the iPod Touch probably could replace my slowly-dying Palm TX, I’ve picked one up a few days ago. The box said that it required Windows or Mac OS X, which is an irritation but not a problem; I have this system set up to dual-boot between Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP, as well as having a VMware virtual Windows XP box under Linux.

I pulled it out, carefully unwrapped it, and turned it on. It showed a screen that seemed to be saying it had to be plugged into my computer, so I did so. Then, reading the quick-start manual, I saw that I had to load iTunes. Grumbling, I downloaded and installed it.

iTunes says that my brand-spankin’-new iPod Touch has an old version of the OS, and would I like to upgrade to 2.0 for an additional $10? Grumbling further (but not really surprised — I’d read up on it before I bought it), I agreed, paid my ten bucks, and downloaded the update. iTunes wiped the old OS, put the Touch into recovery mode, and then… said that there was an error.

It seems that you can do nearly everything with the Touch via Windows XP running in a VMware virtual machine, but upgrading the OS requires Windows to be running on the bare metal.

After taking care of that little problem (via dual-boot), I settled down to moving my data.

My contact list isn’t all that large — about 100 people — and it had ten years worth of accumulated cruft and outdated information, so I decided to move that manually, updating each one as I did. That took a while, but had no major surprises. I decided to sync it with my GMail account as well, so I’d have an online backup; no problems there either.

The 120+ e-books that I’ve purchased for my Palm over the years were all bought from eReader.com. The eReader program was available in the iTunes Application store (for free, of course), so I loaded it up. I dredged up the password for eReader.com, entered it, and was pleased to discover that my e-books were all there, waiting to be downloaded for the iPod. I downloaded one old favorite and tried to unlock it. Tried being the operative word… somehow, even after entering the proper unlocking information, it wouldn’t work. I had to sign onto the site via a web browser and update my information, then re-download the book, before it would work. It should work for all of them now though.

The To-Do List was… interesting. The iPod Touch doesn’t have one built in, so I checked out their Application Store. There were three free to-do list applications that I downloaded and tested. The first two (I don’t remember their names) were too simple to be useful for me; neither one could handle more than a single list, for instance. The third one was Dobot Todos, and it didn’t take long to realize that I had a winner. Unfortunately the Apple store is two revisions behind, and is dragging its collective feet about updates… I’m sure they’ll correct that eventually, but I wish they’d do it more quickly.

Next up: my calendar information. This is the single most-used function of my Palm TX, and I really really didn’t want to have to re-enter all of the data for it by hand. But from everything I could see, the only direct way to get my information moved over (without a Mac computer to go through) was to go through Microsoft Outlook.

Yuck.

But I did have a long-since-retired copy of Office XP (with Outlook 2002) around here somewhere, so I started excavating my CD-ROM collection and finally found it. It installed with no problem, and with a little setup, it synced to the iPod easily — the only trouble was that two of my contacts somehow got duplicates. I carefully deleted the duplicate entries, re-synced, and made sure the originals were still in both places (they were) and wouldn’t re-duplicate themselves on later syncs (they didn’t), then I was ready for my Palm data.

Unfortunately, my Palm doesn’t seem to want to retire, and it and the rest of my electronics fought me all the way.

First I had to dig out the CD that it originally came with (which meant another excavation), then RE-install the Palm Desktop software (for some reason, the installation I already had on that machine wasn’t good enough for it), then tell that to sync to Outlook instead (carefully telling it to overwrite the Palm’s contact information with the desktop’s). Then the virtual machine wouldn’t make a wired connection with the Palm, no matter what I tried — I never did figure that one out. Then the network connection couldn’t find my XP virtual machine (VMware’s bridged network connection was hooked to a different network card than the one that I’m currently using). I finally got everything set up properly though, and the Palm reluctantly turned over its information to Outlook, which then sent it on to the iPod. A few manual tweaks (because the iPod doesn’t seem to like the “zero minutes ahead” alarm setting), and all seems well now.

My next project is getting a few audio-books (that I purchased from Audible.com) onto it. That shouldn’t be a problem… I hope. 🙂 Then, once WinPwn comes out with an update for the 2.0.1 firmware, I’ll jailbreak the iPod so I can load my music onto it from Linux. Then the configuration stage should be complete.