Assorted CES Gizmos

Frank Buckheimer writes "The CES 2003 show in Las Vegas will give us some pretty nice introductions of some brand new products." Other submitters sent in news about a "Mini PC" the size of a paperback book, and a spiffy digital sound projector. mbstone writes "Bill Gates announced a line of MS wristwatches that receive email, stock quotes, sports scores, etc. by FM radio. Gates claims it's a 'whole new product concept that was completely incubated by Microsoft Research,' but it's really just a reprise of the Seiko MessageWatch -- mine became just a watch, sans atomic time, as of 12/31/99 when Seiko called it quits. Once bitten, twice shy. Has anybody proposed an open standard for such gadgets so that new wristwatch-data-service providers can enter the market when the old provider leaves?"

Comments

Excellent things for the work place..

[Gortbusters.org]

I hate paper documents... besides being wasteful of trees, any notes you take normally have to be typed up and recorded for quality purposes (like ISO). Give me a mini-PC or tablet PC anyday.. I'll even sometimes lug around a laptop.

In regards to the MS watch? Who needs that when you carry around a cell phone with the same thing or a PDA with the same thing.

Re:Excellent things for the work place..

[Rhubarb Crumble]

In regards to the MS watch? Who needs that when you carry around a cell phone with the same thing or a PDA with the same thing.

Because it's a lot more convenient to just look at a wrist watch rather than at a PDA - or do you have your PDA strapped to your arm? My cell phone is in my pocket, and I don't want to have to take it out whenever I want to check the time.

Also, my wristwatch is a lot more lightweight than any PDA or cell phone I've ever seen...

MS Messagewatch

[Hanno]

If I understand the concept correctly, these watches are only receiving data, not sending. So basically, it's a mini-pager. Is this revolutionary?

Re:MS Messagewatch

[nojomofo]

Does every new product have to be a revolution that ushers in a whole new paradigm and way of life, or is a company allowed to just make a neat gizmo?

Well, a "whole new product concept that was completely incubated by Microsoft Research" would be expected to be a revolution or something, not just a copy of 20 or 30-year-old technology with a watchband on it. I'm also not particularly impressed that it uses FM. Should I be?

Re:Another Microsoft Innovation,

[macshit]

Seriously, this seems another indication that when it comes to consumer products, Microsoft has no clue what people want. The X-Box is still #3 and losing them money, and Bob was an unmitigated disaster. Do they really think that Joe Six-Pack wants and needs something like this?

It's looking more and more like their strategy is simply to try everything, until they eventually succeed (in taking over the world). For a normal company, this would be quick suicide -- but MS has Lots And Lots Of Money.

Gah.