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Your PDA on Your Wrist

Techstination feature for Tuesday, March 12, 2002

Your PDA on your wrist. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. The folks at Fossil have been best known for their fashionable watches and accessories... .and not much for high tech. Until now. The company is about to launch two new models in what it calls its Wrist PDA line. Fossil technology VP Donald Brewer... says the idea is to let you carry the data that is on a Palm or PocketPC... on your wrist...

"The customer would have the Wrist PDA, configure the software in their handheld and then beam the appropriate data down to their watch."

The watch can store all or some of your address book, calendar, to do list and memo pad... .

"The watch is limited to 191K of memory. In some cases you may have to configure different categories that you want to download. So it may not be able to hold every single bit of data that you have."

Since Palm and PocketPC devices are designed to be carried with you anyway... .is there really a need for a companion watch?

"Well we think that even though the handheld is small it's still something that's an extra device. People travel and they have their handheld and their cell phone and they have a variety of other devices and we think that in some cases the watch provides a more convenient mechanism to carry that data that they would have in their handheld."

It takes some time to learn how to navigate through the screens. The styling of the watch is futuristic....but the bulky size means you probably won't find many women willing to wear one. The Wrist PDAs will be available this spring... for under 150 dollars. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.