2010年7月14日星期三

Review of the Abacus Wrist PDA (AU5005)

Whatever you do, do not select this option. There is a bugin the Wrist PDA software which will cause the watch to freeze up after it timesout into watch mode when this option is selected, and even a hard reset will notbring it back. (I reproduced this bug twice, and both times, spent well over anhour getting the watch into working order again.) Fossil, if you're listening,this would be a really good one to fix as soon as possible.Of course, you can further customize your Wrist PDA with third-party applications.How well Palm applications work on your Wrist PDA really depends on how well theyadapt to the 160 x 160 screen. You are definitely going to have the most luck withapplications created especially for the Wrist PDA like those from the new BEIKSWrist PDA site. According to thispage, a Wrist PDA softwarestore will be coming soon to Fossil's site, as well. And finally, if you're thedo-it-yourself kind of geek, the FossilWrist PDA SDK (software development kit)will allow you to write your own watch software.BeamingBeaming data to and from the Wrist PDA is a snap. I beamed several records backand forth between another Palm device (a Garmin iQue 3600) with no problems whatsoever.In order to preserve battery life, you might want to go into Prefs > Generaland turn "Beam Receive" off which means the watch is not using power waitingfor an incoming infrared signal. Just remember to turn it back on before tryingto beam data to the watch again, or it won't work.Beaming data is nothing new. In fact, we've been beaming data using infrared forprobably close to a decade now, and more recently, we've started using Bluetooth,wireless networking, and GPRS. But I have to say, beaming data to and from my watchput the experience in a whole new context, and it seemed as fun and geeky as thevery first time I did it.You can decide whether youwant the Wrist PDA to go into watch mode when PDA mode times out, whether you wantthe screen to simply go blank (to preserve power), or whether you want the watchto remain in PDA mode (though it still "locks" so you don't accidentallycreate arbitrary appointments while thrashing about in your sleep). There's a sectionfor picking your watch application, though the only choice right now is "WatchA" whichrefers to the Watch Mode application, but it looks like in the future, you mightbe able to select different watch applications. There's also a "Lock Face" optionwhich is supposed to prevent you from changing watch faces with the rocker switchin watch mode.