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Wristwatch USB Drive
opwierde writes "For the gadget happy multitude LAKS has made the ultimate wristwatch. It's a USB drive combined with a watch and they've managed to make it look rather nice." (This looks like a nice place to store a persistent homedir to use with Knoppix-MiB ;))
a link in the article would of been nice
www.laks.com
If you had scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page, they show where it folds into the wristband. They more than likely showed it with the cord out so you could see that exactly how it worked.
libertarianswag.com
Click on the picture and scroll down and you'll see that it tucks in pretty nicely on the strap.
Nice looking watch
Look at loads of pics from thinkgeek here
Why not just add a bit more memory to your phone or Palm Pilot?
Because your phone and PDA can't act as a disk. They're a USB device, not a USB server.
If you don't like the watch, get the keychain. If you don't like the keychain, get the watch.
Ia agree. My USB keychain fob is smaller, less obstrusive, and there are days I simply do not want to wear a watch. My keychain is almost always with me.
Neat gadget, but not nearly as practical as the key drives.
Generally, anything built into fashion is going to be useless at some point. Clothes, accessories, etc are temporary and best suited just to cover us and make us look good. I don't exactly see the Armageddon Bra (bad example, I know but I cant help but mention it) flying off the shelves and anyone wearing those "PDA pockets dockers" just looks silly.
Personally, I'd love to see the USB key drive replace the floppy. Its easy to use, holds tons of data, and is pretty cheap. My Lexar 128 meg drive was $40 after rebate. Plus it would be nice not to be the only guy in the room with one.
Sooner than I thought.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
If you're going to be storing files on your watch, you might as well listen to music at the same time with one of these.
You can buy one for the low price of $129.99 USD at your local Radioshack.
Not only does it function as a watch, it also plays mp3 files (4 hours of play time on one AAA battery) and stores data (by way of usb mass storage device).
You get a choice of wearing it on the GripClip cradle, wriststrap, or lanyard. Much more convenient than just a watch.
It works without drivers in winXP (or newer, when we get newer) and MacOSX.
Best of all. Because it acts as a USB mass storage device it works under linux. Simply compile in the usb drivers, usb mass storage drivers, FAT files system drivers, and scsi generic drivers and your ready to go (after a simple mount =)
It even includes the AAA battery =)
-this comment would be modded up if I posted it earlier =)
Hey, for being voted Best Employer in 2003 here in Belgium, Microsoft Belgium gave all employees one of these watches free!
Or just do a google search for USB wristwatch to find even more.
If you're in Germany, you can get one for free! The ISP 1&1 is giving away the 32MB version when you sign up for DSL. The offer ends in a week.
Some features it lists:
Although it doesn't say so, it is the Laks watch that they are offering. Personally, I preferred the combo DSL/ISDN PCI card that 1&1 used to offer.
-- Steve
"Why is the cable on the watach and not vice-versa?"
Probably because it would feel a lot worse to have a small plastic rounded watch band, and you would then also have to remove the watch to make use of it. If you're a contortionist, you don't have to now.
"Why doesn't it use a MicroUSB Connector?"
Probably because there are already two different small USB implementations, neither of which are on any standard-design PC. Sony desktop computers do not count. It's much more useful if you can plug it into a slot that *every* modern computer has, rather than having to carry an adapter around with you to use it.
"Why doesn't it use Bluetooth instead? For that capacity, the lack of speed ain't an issue."
Power/heat requirements, probably, and possibly due to a lack of widespread adoption of bluetooth on desktop equipment. If you have one that is bluetooth, you need to supply either a reliable way to turn it off, so its not constantly looking for computers to connect to, and you need to have a much better power source than a dime-battery. As with the previous comment about USB, if you can't find a computer that is aready equipped to handle the device, then there really isn't a point to having the device in the first place.
This all being said, it would have been nice if they would have used a different, thinner USB cable, even with that connector, and if they had hidden the connector inside the body of the watch so that it doesn't stand out like it does, but at least they built it in the first place. Hopefully they'll come out with some better ones now.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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I got one of these myself and it's really nice.
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda
Anyway I wanted to be a bit more sophisticated
and have multiple disk images that I can just
dd to the watch (/dev/sda) as required., rather
than just have the 1 vfat partition on it.
However when you dd a 2 partition disk image to
the watch for e.g. after it's been registered
with having only 1 partition, you can't mount
or do anything with
So you need to get the linux kernel to reread
the partition table, and the handy way to do
this is: blockdev --rereadpt
also the best size to read/write the watch (32MB
version anyway) is: 32k, so to backup the watch
just: dd bs=32k if=/dev/sda of=watch.backup
Knoppix detects quite a variety of USB flash drives. Throw a Knoppix CD on your box, and if it works use the info to setup your main distro.
It's also available at ThinkGeek.