Wrist PDA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fossil Wrist PDA is a Personal Digital Assistant designed to take the place of a wristwatch.
The device, manufactured by Fossil, features a tiny gray 160x160 pixel screen, the same number of pixels as most palm devices up to Palm III, with 16 shades of gray. It is run on Palm OS 4.1 and has a tiny stylus hidden in the watch clasp. It is able to carry out most PDA functions, and run any normal Palm OS-compatible application. It features 8 Mb of RAM (about 7.7 Mb available to user) and 4 Mb of flash memory. Like other Palm OS devices, it can synchronize or exchange information with PC or Mac, has an infrared port, a virtual keyboard, and a touch screen.
The device also has a watch mode in which it just shows time.
The device is not water-resistant. Its rechargeable lithium-ion batteries last only 3-4 days, according to the manufacturer's info, if left to run 24/7 in standby mode, though a week or more if set to shut down between uses.
The price, as of January 2006, is $79US, though it's often available new for $49 from Amazon.com, occasionally less.
The current model is called Fossil FX2009 Wrist PDA. There were also earlier versions of this device, called Fossil FX2008 Wrist PDA, Abacus AU5005, Abacus AU5006, and Abacus AU5008. Abacus is a subsidiary of Fossil.
Its major (and probably the only) competitor is OnHand PC. OnHand PC has its own OS, but much longer battery life (2-3 months instead of 3-4 days), because it is a much simpler device, with a fraction of the RAM and processor power.
