The USB Watch Looks Good
from the holiday-season-is-coming-around... dept
Okay, I’ll admit that I’ve been drooling over the USB watch since I first heard about them a while back. However, until now I had no idea if they’re any good. However, according to this latest review, they’re a good way to carry around some data. The biggest problem? They’re a bit weak as a watch. Though, honestly, I’ve come to rely on my actual watch less and less these days. The one thing that is definitely true about the watches is that they’re geeky (not something I have a problem with). However, it looks like the USB part is well hidden, so you have to be an exhibitionist geek, showing off the USB cable on your watch for people to know how geeky you are. What I find most interesting about this is the idea of building some useful functionality into the watch. As our pockets get filled with more and more gadgets, we’re running out of space to hold everything. While some people are focused on building watches with full PDA functionality, they often seem like they’re trying to cram too much into a device that’s much too small. However, with something as simple as a USB drive, it makes perfect sense to add it to the watch.
Comments on “The USB Watch Looks Good”
They look good...
I have a friend who now owns one of the USB watches. It quite surprised me when he pulled out the USB cable because I handn’t noticed the geek nature of the watch until he did so. My only reservation on the thing (other than the fact that I can’t wear one due to wrist problems) is that I wonder about the longevity of the band – in my experience the band goes before anything else on a watch, but in this case, you can’t replace it.
Not perfect but worth the money
I needed a new “everyday” watch and had heard about the Laks memory watch. So I figured for $100 for the 128MB version at ThinkGeek, I’d give it a try.
The day I received it, our network file server went down at work, and we don’t do a lot of desktop disk sharing for security reasons, so I had no good way of moving a 5MB CAD file from my machine to a co-worker’s. I plugged in the watch to my Win2000 machine, which recognized it without a problem, took it to his WinXP box and in a few minutes the file was moved. No extra software to install, just plug it in and away you go. I’ve also started to move data to my Linux machines this way – quick and easy.
I like it so much that I’ve started taking back-ups of project documents (presentations, etc.) with me when I travel for work on the watch. Hard disk in a notebook fail? No problem, just find someone with Win98 SE or higher on a machine with a USB port and you’re back in business.
My one complaint – no date display! I can usually take a pretty good guess at what time it is, but I can never remember the date. Still, worth the price and then some.
Perhaps Bluetooth would be better served here?
I don’t imagine it’ll be very long ‘for Bluetooth become ubiquitous enough that many/most comps will have a receiver.