Real PDA Wristwatch

Larry Groebe writes "Just before COMDEX, Fossil announced a new PDA in a wristwatch. Based on the Palm OS, this is nothing less than a complete Palm Pilot on your wrist. See here for features and a picture. This is completely UNLIKE Fossil's *first* attempt at a wrist PDA, which was a hopeless view-only gadget. This new model allows regular Graffiti input and appears to run all Palm programs! At $149, I may be the first in line when it comes out next spring."

Comments

still fails..

[Lumpy]

and like all the other pda/pc watches it's missing one crucial feature...

WATERPROOF!

Why cant they throw in that small and desperately needed thing? It must be waterproof... so I can wear it swimming,snorkling,in the shower... how about just in the shower/tub without fear of it getting killed?

why cant they do that?

silly little stylus

[The Fun Guy]

Would anyone seriously use the dinky little stylus that's part of the band? Talk about an ergonomic nightmare (and a choking hazard). Why not just include a selectable-point pen with every watch, that will let you switch between blue/black/red ink and a stylus? That seems to make much more sense from an actual functionality standpoint than that tiny stylus, letting you use the PDA concurrently and seamlessly with more traditional dead-tree technology.

Re:silly little stylus

[spotter]

on the IBM linux watch our experiments seemed to imply that using a wheel that you could scroll around (selecting things) and also "click" was a good comprimise, however, one cant do everything that one would do with a palm w/ a device like that.

It's like a tradeoff b/w those REX pcmcia devices and a full fledged palm. Do you want something that you aren't going to do full fledged input on (but can input things into), but is mostly for info retrieval, or something that you actually want to do lots of input into.

Lefties?

[bziman]

Waterproof is important... but for something like this, it would also be nice to have a left-handed model -- or a reversible model. I'm sure their engineers could do that. It would suck to have to use the rocker-control with my left thumb instead of my index finger, like designed.

And what's with the two hour battery life?

Otherwise, very very cool.

an aggressive strike

[Gizzmonic]

Although Fossil brought Palm to the table for this one, does anyone else get the distinct impression that they might be making an end-run into the PDA market?

Fossil is a hugely popular brand (they even have Fossil stores in airports!) and with the low margins on watches, they might be looking for a new market. I mean, right now, any Taiwanese sweatshop can put together a POS digital watch, hell, some kid in his garage could do that.

Remember when watches only had an hour and a minute hand? And then all of a sudden, they had a second hand, and now the date, several time zones, "chrono" mode and other stuff.

The PDA is the next step in complexity and "needed" features for a wristwatch. If Fossil were to come out with its own Palmtop OS, or maybe even take Opie or something, they could ink a deal with a few fortune 500 companies just with the force of their name.

And what happens at "What's up Wednesday" when your technology-fetishizing boss passes out a gaggle of huge PDA-watches to all the gals in accounting? I think you may have to start firing up the copy machine to print out resumes!