Watch this Wednesday: The onHand PC Watch

Last week on Watch this Wednesday we hit you with the mysterious and oh-so-seductive Sexum Adult Digital Watch. This week we bring you all the power of a PC (well, from the 80s) to that wrist real estate you're looking to renovate.

What it is:

The onHand PC watch is actually a PDA, running a 16-bit CPU @ 3.6 MHz, 2MB of flash memory and running W-PS-DOS version 1.16. Using its joystick IR port and onboard virtual QWERTY keyboard you can enter and view data on its 102x64 dot matrix STN liquid crystal display with EL backlight.

Why we like it:
They managed to cram just about all the applications you�d ever want, or even need in a PDA, all in a watch; PIM: Calendar, Addressbook, Task List, Memo Feature, Expense Tracker. File Manager: To add or remove files, folders, or programs. Clock: Digital Clock and World Clock. Accessories: Calculator, Countdown Timer, Chronograph, 4 Games, 4 Alarms, Sound. Viewers: Text Viewer, Image Viewer, Alarm Playback, Chronograph Viewer. Jeez, this is almost better than our Palm V we bought back in �98. Oh, and if you have one of these, here�s a great place to grab some images to put on it.

Where to get it and how much: $109.99 from ThinkGeek.

[Andrew Maule @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I used to own one of these, pretty cool but they're huge and the battery life isn't so great, support's wicked iffy. Awesome concept I hope to see greatly improved in the future.

[Ian @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

wouldn't it be better (and probably cheaper) to just get a PDA and a pocket?...

[David Phillip Oster @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I've got one. Massive on the wrist. I made the mistake of stocking up on cheap batteries for it, then discovered that the batteries didn't have enough juice to run it. The JPEGs in the article drasticly exaggerate the contrast of the LCD display: in reality it is a normal dark gray on brownish gray LCD. The U.S. distributor http://web.archive.org/web/20000302003405/http://www.onhandpc.com/ is long gone now, but you used to be able to download a free complete development system from the Japanese site for the onHandPc, including a version of Metrowerks Codewarrior IDE and C++/C cross-compiler (Windows hosted). The watch's OS was very similar to PCDos.

the onHandPc was sure lousy compared to a Palm Pilot. Moving from program to program was slow: say 30 to 40 seconds. Entering text meant using the watch's up/down/left/right/push for Enter joystick on a picture of a keyboard.

The corresponding desktop software was PC only. No synchornization as we know it today: change one character, and when you synched (using the 9600 baud serial port cradle), it would upload your ENTIRE address book.

Fun version of the video game Defender, though.

[Doug Pratt @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I've had an OnHand for over a year now, bought it when they were $179. Battery life is just fine if you set it so that the screen turns itself off automatically; if it's on 24-7, the batteries last about a day and a half. Which it warns you about in the instructions!

I use it a lot to view simple spreadsheets. For example, I can never keep all the numbers and specifications of some of the hobby rocket motors I sell in my head. I worked out a simple Excel sheet, saved it as comma-delimited, and used the CSV Viewer on the OnHand to view it. Now I can be out in the middle of a rocket range and pull up exact numbers by looking at my watch. Not too darn bad. There are also some nifty games available for times where you're stuck somewhere without a book.

Not a bad little gadget. Does what it's advertised to do. Very durable. And I used the alarm-composing utility to set it up to play the theme from "Thunderbirds." Take that, ring-tone downloaders!

[Charles @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

This is really old tech. The watch on the right is a rebadged "Ruputer," which came out in Japan around 1998. The left one is presumably a rebadged later model. Here's a pic:

http://soli.inav.net/~ceicher/pages/stuff5.html

So these watches have been around for 5 years or so, they flopped in Japan so they've got to flog them somewhere.

[NA @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I own this watch. I really like it. Programmable in C, I have made my own applications. Still available from http://matsucomusa.com/