Seven-Ounce Linux 'Wrist PC'

An anonymous reader writes "A European research and development firm has announced a seven-ounce, wrist-worn wearable computer with a 2.2 x 2.8-inch color touchscreen. Eurotech's WWPC (wrist-worn PC) runs Linux or Windows, offers a wealth of standard PC interfaces (WLAN, Bluetooth, IrDA, USB, SD-card, etc), and has patented technology that puts the device to sleep when the user drops their arm. It can detect motionless user states, and serve as a location-transmitting beacon, thanks to a built-in GPS receiver and 'dead reckoning' technology. The company also claims six hours of battery life under 'fully operational' conditions."

Re:Neat!

[jacksonj04]

I want a watch with Bluetooth which syncs my appointments and automatically sets alarms. I always have my watch, I don't always have my PDA.

Re:Neat!

[electrichamster]

My dream for a long time has been a dumb-terminal bluetooth watch - Normally it acts as a watch, but when your bluetooth enabled mp3 player/laptop/phone connect, it acts as a dumb display/controller for them.

I can but dream.

Xybernaut will sue them into oblivion

[eronysis]

Doesn't Xybernaut still have submarine patents on near every wearable computin device? I know one of thier submarines technically covered digital wristwatches...

Re:Neat!

[iamdrscience]

I want a watch with Bluetooth which syncs my appointments and automatically sets alarms.

That seems like a pain in the ass. If the alarm goes off for the time your appointment is set to, what good is it? You're already late unless you already got there on time. If your watch sounds an alarm before your appointment to allow you travel time, then you've got another problem because not all appointments require the same amount of travel time (i.e. meeting a friend across town vs. going to a meeting just one floor up from you) so you've got to double the amount of times you have to set for your appointments in order to get your watch to sound at the right time, you've got to set the time of the appointment and the time that you want the alarm to go off. At this point you might as well just be setting your watch manually anyways because it would take just as long to punch the times into your PDA manually.

A patented what now

[Mixel]

and has patented technology that puts the device to sleep when the user drops their arm

Erm, also known as a... tilt switch? not enough? try 3 switches, one for each dimension. still wanting? use one for each DOF. no? Measure some arm drops, run them through a an auto-correlating neural net and compare with input data. Seriously, I see no reason to patent this stuff.

I reckon that either they've created something totally ingenious that they can sell the rights to for a whole lot more than they can make out of wrist PCs (unlikely), or they patented something that is bloody obvious already.

802.11b has nothing to do with WPA

[Vellmont]

They are two seperate issues. There's absolutely no reason you can't do WPA or even the full 802.11i with a 802.11b only chipset. The reason you don't see a lot of vendor support for WPA on old 802.11b chipsets is simply because vendors are lazy and don't want to backport the WPA support to older, largely abandoned chipsets.

A better design

[uberjoe]

My dream wearable computer would have all the guts contained in a belt, a bluetooth enabled display in a HUD projected on my glasses.

Modern PDAs have an awful lot of power these days, more so than my pentium pro desktop from a few years ago. Where they fall flat IMO is in the display. I can't get much done with a 3 by 4 inch display. But if all the batteries, memory, and processor spread out around my waist, I wouldn't really notice the weight, and a full screen translucent display in front of my eyes that no one else can see would be pretty cool.

Is anyone else irritated by ...

[Mostly a lurker]

... mobile product descriptions that talk about weight without the heaviest components. TFA states The WWPC weighs seven ounces (200 grams) without straps/batteries, Eurotech says. I will bet the batteries are the heaviest component, Seven ounce total weight for a device I carry around on my wrist might be bearable. However, I will bet the total weight is over 15 ounces and I could only imagine wearing that if I was a muscle builder.