Review of the Abacus Wrist PDA (AU5005)

Now you're ready to explore the rest of the watch. I'm happy to report that Ifound the Wrist PDA to be very intuitive to use, and convenient to operateone-handed (thanks to the rocker switch). Granted, I do have the advantage of havingused various Palm devices for many years, but I found I was able to operate everyfunction on the watch without once opening the instruction booklet.The watch faces range from traditional analog displays to unusual digitallayouts. This is similar to MSN Direct watches' ability to use different faces,and is a very nice touch.I would have liked to see some very basic applications installed to give the watchmore of a traditional watch feel, like an alarm application. Of course, you canset an alarm using the calendar application, but it would be nice if there werea streamlined way of setting an alarm that worked more like a standard watch alarm.Same goes for a countdown timer and a stopwatch application. The A+application by BEIKS provides a stopwatch, and I'm sure other third-party applicationscan be downloaded to provide additional functionality, but it would be nice ifthey were installed right out of the box.The watch produces plenty of beeps and chirps from it's internal speaker duringnormal operation. I found them to be loud enough to be useful audible cues, butsubtle enough not be embarrassing in public places. The one complaint I have withthe watch's speaker is that the appointment alarm could be louder. If you're notfamiliar with the Palm OS, and especially Jot, you will definitely want to takea look through the instruction manual and the various tutorials available on thewatch itself. I can say pretty definitively, though, that anyone interested inowning a watch like this, and who has gotten this far in my review, will have notrouble getting acclimated to the Wrist PDA. Watch ModeThe "watch" portion of the watch (as distinct from the PDA) seems tosimply be implemented as a Palm application. You can select it from the applicationmenu, or you can allow the watch to enter watch mode automatically after a configurabletimeout period. This generally works out fine, especially since the Palm OS displaysthe time in the upper left hand corner so you can still see what time it is evenwhen you're not in watch mode, although I would like to see a shortcut for puttingthe watch back into watch mode when you're done using the PDA. Maybe holding downthe rocker switch button for two seconds, or something like that. The problem isthat the Palm OS doesn't display the date, so if you're in PDA mode and you needto know what day it is, you either have to go into the calendar (not very convenient),or wait for the watch to timeout and go back into watch mode.Once in watch mode, you can select from 11 different watch faces using the rockerswitch.