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Fossil's $145 PDA Watch
Robogeek writes: "News.com reports that Fossil will launch its $145 Wrist PDA in early 2002 - "a watch that doubles as a Palm- or Pocket PC-compatible organizer." Apparently, the 190KB device will accept data imported from your PDA via infrared. But isn't this kind of redundant if you're already carrying your PDA with you? (And can't enter data directly into the watch?) Besides, what I really want is a combo phone/mp3 player/PDA watch, dammit!"
The problem I have with my Palm III is tossing in in to the seat bag of my bike when I go off for an afternoon ride.
I'm often on call all day - and as long as I've got my cell phone and my palm (sycn'd to my deskptop) - I can pretty much handle anything that comes up. But I haven't found a great way to keep all of it (phone and organizer) at hand with out having my belt starting to look like the batman's.
If I could painlessly off load my schedule and my phone list to a wristwatch - and then just schlep a little phone/email/web combo doohicky - I'd be in mobile worker heaven!
And people wouldn't shake their heads and lower their eyes when I walk by - like they used to do in High School when I proudly wore my TI-55 on my belt loop... grin.
In illa quae ultra sunt
I used to have a great Casio calculator watch. It had storage for phone numbers, a calendar, and could serve as a four-function calculator. Great stuff.
Since it didn't sync with a computer, you had to input data by hand. This was at the same time a limitation and a blessing - numbers had to be typed in one by one, but you could always type something in whenever you needed to take a note.
Back to the Fossil.
- You can't type things in. This is key if someone gives you a phone number, or you stumble across something you need to remember. You come off looking like a nerd, but I'd much rather look like a nerd with a cool watch than a nerd with a cool watch and lots of paper scraps in his shirt pocket.
- It syncs your entire address book. I for one don't want every single address that's on my computer to be sent to my watch. Searching and browsing is a pain, and I'd much rather only have numbers that I need on hand. My Casio only ever had at most 40 numbers in it - important ones.
Because of its limitations, I got a Xircom Rex MiniPDA (basically a PCMCIA card with a touch-screen that does addresses, notes, calendar, and third-party apps). In the end, I threw out the Casio and got an analog watch. The Rex does everything I'd ever need a PDA to do, and it's tiny. This sounds like a product plug - must stop now.Ceci n'est pas une sig
I've been trying to get my dad to use some sort of electronic organizer for years. He's stuck to a plain paper date/phone book even though pages are falling out, no one is in the right order, etc. I bought him a cheap Palm a few months ago thinking that he shouldn't have a problem getting used to graffiti and entering names and phone numbers with a stylus wouldn't be that hard.
What does he do? He had my little sister put the contents of his planner that she could read in to the palm, but he doesn't take it when he goes on the road. He will forget a number, call home, and have someone look it up in the palm. With something like this, my sister could load up the watch for him and he would be set.
I know what he's getting for his birthday/Father's day gift.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
anyone here remember the timex datalink? the little guy had a motorola 6805 in it, and 48k or so of memory... in other words about as powerful as an 8-bit atari or c64, except the form factor is much more portable. :) but the really interesting feature was the solution they used to download information from the host computer - the sender program flashed info on the screen like a barcode, and the watch synchronised with the monitor's refresh rate and read the barcode with a photocell. that was quite an interesting toy. :)
but having the pda on the wrist is really convenient. plus, if it has a similar programmable interface as the timex, and can connect to my laptop via infrared, i'll be seriously tempted...
My other car is a cons.
I've had about 4 different datalink models -- the original, two of the middle ones (the 100?) and one of the newer 150s. I'd break or lose them (had the last one stolen) but only updated the info on them every few months.
Absolutely perfect for things like phone numbers that I would always have handy no matter what i was doing.
Now I'm looking at replacing the stolen one with the Ironman Datalink -- seems to have less memory, but all the regular Ironman features that the Datalink series doesn't normally have. I only need about 50 phone numbers with me 24/7, so it's probably fine...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Casio has had a watchws that can interface via IR with each other and with Palms for months now. Take a look. List Price: US$130
You could get a really really ugly watch for less than half the price. With a 102 x 64 screen you aren't going to get much usable info on the screen and the size and looks of the watch make it a poor choice. The Timex/MS watch from a couple of years ago looked a lot better and while only really scrolled a single line of text was usable. Some thing like the REX in my pocket and a normal watch seems like a much better deal than this. The REX 6000 from Xircom had a touch screen 512KB (IIRC) and very limited scroll to you get the letter you want input but it had a readable screen and multiple apps, if you could download apps it would have been killer, but only palm has seemed to figure that out. If the digital paper stuff from Digital Ink or Xerox ever gets out the door such that you could roll up the screen and the batteries , memory and processor fit inside a small module with the screen rapping arround I'd by one of those in a second probably as small or smaller than lipstick (or chapstick for the guys) would be really useful and probably could get 640x480, thats what I'm waiting for!!!!
If this were such a good idea then what ever became of the "TV" watches, radio watches, calculator watches etc... Heck I even had one of those cool calculator watches I won in a spelling bee in grade school. The problem here is functional size, no one has finger small enough to actually realistically operate one of these things, additionaly a PDA screen the size of a nickel would quickly destroy the 20/20 vision of most PDA users who already spend half their days straining their necks and eyes looking at glaring CRT tubes.
This one is a dead horse, and I'm not being pessimistic.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Fossil's new "watch" really makes me wonder how long we will revel in gagetry like this before reality kicks in. The simple fact of the matter is, that once the "boys with toys" effect has worn off, functionality becomes an issue. To be brutally honest, wearing a computer on my wrist makes precious little sense if I can't read the screen. If I can't enter information comfortably and quickly (which I don't see happening here: it's the size of a wristwatch) then what's the use? And if transfering information on and off of it is a problem, I'm not sure how much use it really is. In PDAs, use of styluses and infrared ports have helped make convenience actually convenient, overcoming these obstacles to some extent, but in a wristwatch its simply not possible. I'll save my $145.
What's in a Sig?