Palm OS Wristwatch Cool Geek Gadget; Not Ready For Masses

After spending a week with the new Palm OS-based Fossil Wrist PDA, I can see how gadget freaks could love it, but not "normal" humans.

Not only does the device have all the advantages of a PDA, but it's got all the limitations -- in spades.

Small screen, small fonts, hard to read? Check. Awkward handwritten data entry? Double-check. Short battery life? Check again. Limited data communications? Re-check. The bottom line is that it's not ready for prime time.

On the other hand, if you're a gadget geek, you should probably just go ahead and buy one now. Today. Because the idea that there's something like this out there, something this design-sexy, something this essentially cool, will eat away at you until you just have to have one.

There are only a couple of reasons you might want to wait. One is that it only comes with a leather band. When Fossil announced the Wrist PDA the first time, in 2002, it showed it with a metal band. I don't know about you but I'd really rather have a metal band. The other reason is that if you wait a while the next version of the Wrist PDA may solve some of the nagging inadequacies of the 1.0 version.

The Fossil Wrist PDA is truly a Palm PDA. It runs PalmOS 4.1 on a 66MHz Motorola Dragonball Super VZ processor. Its 8MB of memory, infrared port, and backlit 160-by-160 screen make it compatible with a world of Palm software. (It comes with the familiar Palm Desktop and HotSynch Manager, by the way.)

It's also truly a wristwatch -- a big one, but still wearable -- and you can choose any of a dozen different time displays. If you're enough of a gadget geek to have ever worn a calculator watch, then the Wrist PDA will feel like old times. (And speaking of "on the other wrist," if you're left-handed and wear your watch on your right wrist like I do, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how little the change-over affects the operation of the gizmo.)

As an object, the Wrist PDA is what the French call beau comme un camion, -- beautiful like a truck. It's a big chunk of satin-finish chrome and a strapping big black wriststrap with a big chrome buckle where you hide the clever little fold-up stylus. It's got a one-inch-square screen, four black buttons and little rubber plug to keep dirt out of the data connector. It weighs