 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: Fossil Abacus AU5005 Wrist PDA with Palm OS - Black | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
User Submitted Fossil Abacus AU5005 Wrist PDA with Palm OS - Black Reviews (cont...)Date: 2005-09-13 It's a Palm PIlot on a watch, what more do you need to know? I received my Fossil Abacus watch a few weeks ago and have been using it every day ever since. Software compatibility with Palm Pilot apps is excellent. Basically, anything that can run on version 4.0 of the Palm OS can run on this watch. Only drawback (if you want to call it that) is that this watch has the full 160x160 display of the Palm Pilot shrunk down to the size of a quarter - and as many apps use small fonts in the first place, you probably need good eyesight if you plan on using this as more than just a watch. I currently run Weasel Reader, a free and open source eBook reader that uses it's own open zTxt format. Written for a full-sized Palm Pilot, the text sized ends up very small on the Abacus in order to fit about 40 chars by 20 lines on a watch display. I have about 5 books stored on the watch and at about 100-200k each, that's hardly 1/8 of the available memory. I have no trouble reading books this way but in direct sunlight, it sometimes requires trying different angles to get a good view. The watch face is an actual touch-screen, which by itself is exceedingly cool in a watch, and within the watch band there's a small stylus (an extra is included in the box) - but it's a little tedious to use and I usually use a normal PDA stylus instead. USB hotsync is amazingly fast for this watch. A few megabytes transfer over in a few seconds. Another cool aspect is the watch uses a standard mini USB port for _BOTH_ data transfer and recharging! That's right, plug your watch into any computer with a USB port and within an hour, it's fully charged up for a couple more days. For developers, Fossil provides an SDK that can be used with either Codewarrior or the free (and superior) IDE that Palm OS Developers Suite from PalmSource. One of the unique features of this SDK is that a developer can create their own watch faces, which are simply programs that are called every minute to update the screen. This opens up a lot of interesting possibilities such as a watch face that shows moon phases, tides, or perhaps randomly generated graphic designs, especially with it's 160x160 16-grayscale display. Date: 2005-09-11 the ONLY problem - battery life BUT, what the is the difference between Fossil's FX expensive series & AU low-priced series (Abacus) ?? I have compared them.They are of the same functions & systems . Can anyone tell me ?? Date: 2005-09-10 Love It I love electronic gadgets but hate to carry stuff around. The Wrist PDA is a handy way to carry around all my PDA info and have access to it right on my wrist. It was easy to install and setup. The down sides to it are: It's very small to read. It's so small it can be hard to use the stylus to hit the icon that I want. You can't type on it or take notes due to size of screen. The battery has a realitively short life and needs to be plugged in and recharged at least everyday or it goes flat dead. But I can live with those. Moreless it is a great reference tool! Date: 2005-09-03 Giant Compared to my other watches, this is gigantic. It is heavy. It looks cumbersome and overwhelming. I was unable to clearly see the very tiny screen fonts. Unusable. Back it goes. Date: 2005-08-29 Abacus WristPDA (AU5005) Review I have always been interested in the coolest gadget watches and over the years I have had the pleasure of owning some great ones including one of the rare Casio Scientific calculator watches, the remote control watch as well as the Casio WristCamera Color (which I use even today) So the WristPDA was a natural progression for me. I had been interested in it since it was announced a couple of years back but the pricing (> $200) kind of held be back!. But the moment I saw the price drop on Amazon, well, I pushed the button and now I have this cool one too! First off, I should make it clear that overall I am well satisfied by this great little gadget. For the price I paid (79.99 at amazon) I think it is well worth the money! The only thing I was worried about while waiting for it to arrive was its size on my wrist (since I have a small'ish wrist, my WristCamera watch felt a little too bulky for comfortable use). Anyway I am glad to report that even though the Abacus is not small by any standards, its sleek design definitely does not feel bulky at all and it looks real nice on my wrist!! Since it is Palm OS powered, usage of this watch is quite similar to the usual Palm powered PDA's (the grayscale versions). The Font, although quite small, is crystal clear to read and I did not have difficulty in using any application. The included stylus although completely functional does feel uncomfortable if you use it for long. I recommend a full size stylus whenever possible. I was able to find and load quite a lot of standard applications onto this watch. Just look for the grayscale versions with support for Palm OS 4.x. Most of the freeware games work as well (although the ones dependent on the Hard keys on a standard PDA may need to be tweaked). The IrDA functions work well too and I was able to sync my cellphone addressbook with the WristPDA quite easily with a few clicks. The Handwriting recognition (Jot) is amazing as well. Infact it is so good and fast at recognizing NORMAL writing style, Initially I had difficulty 'unlearning' the special Grafitti style letter writing used by older PDA's. But if you are a Grafitti fan, then the wristPDA does support that mode as well. I only have 2 concerns with this watch: - The first one is the relative lack of any protection for the sensitive touch-screen face of the watch. For a normal PDA, there is an option of a case/pouch. But as a watch, the face is always exposed and there is a high probability of scratches/nicks from the elements. I now use a PDA screen protector film (cut to size) for reducing this problem. - The second one is the lack of any water resistance. Even rain is supposed to be dangerous for the watch! So be careful while singing in the shower with this watch :-) The other minor issue I have is the mandatory 2 day recharge period. But hey the watch is not doing anything in the night... might as well recharge it! But overall I think Abacus/Amazon deserves a hand in making such a great piece of equipment for a relatively affordable price.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ©2004 SimplyHandhelds, All rights reserved. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
