Dick Tracy's New Linux Box?

An anonymous reader writes "The Zypad is a new arm-wearable computer right out of Futurama. It can run Windows CE or Linux and has a 400 MHz CPU, 64MB Flash memory, 3.5 inch screen. The Zypad leaves the user's hands free — it has no keyboard, just a touchscreen and navigation keys. Voice recognition is 'being developed.' It turns on only when you look at it, so it saves power. It has GPS and Bluetooth/WLAN/GSM connectivity. Price: 1000 Euro." Too bad it's not yet available for sale — that screen looks more useful than the one on IBM's Linux watch from 2000.

I wonder...

[Aqua_boy17]

'It turns on only when you look at it'

I wish it was that easy to turn my wife on.

Seriously though, I'm curious about the technology that makes this possible (no I didn't download the PDF yet). It would be pretty slick to incorporate this into other devices.

It's a cool idea, but personally if I were to drop a thousand euros on one of these I don't think I'd be wearing it on my wrist. I'm kind of a klutz sometimes and am pretty hard on watch crystals so I don't think it would take me too long to crack the display.

Re:voice recognition

[AndroidCat]

It'd be nice if Nuance didn't have a lock on the market by aquiring the bits of all the speech companies that crashed and burned.

Re:voice recognition

[DrSkwid]

Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 Standard

System requirements :
256Mb RAM (512Mb preferred)
500Mb Free DIsk space

1Gb > 64Mb

Re:As worn by Duke Nukem Forever!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it's not yet in existence. When I see a radically new gadget from some company I've never heard of whose press release touts multiple moves forward in different realms of technology, and all they have to show is a computer-generated graphic of the thing...well, I've never seen any such device ever show up to market. Not ever, in my memory.
Oh, believe me. It exists. We have a couple of them in the lab here, and they work great. They have some problems with audio, but that appears to be a problem with the 2.6.16-rc3 build of the kernel they have on the devkits. They've promised a fixed version to us in the next week. We haven't done much with them under CE, except to see that it actually works. They have the basic apps you would expect -- media player, email client, browser, etc. Not much to see except that you wear it on your arm.

Left-handed model?

[T1girl]

I'm wondering if it comes in right-handed, left-handed and ambidextrous models. Being a petite-sized person with small wrists and rather short arms, I would find this clunky device rather cumbersome. It would feel like having a can of soda strapped to your arm. A larger person with beefy arms might find it too tight, although the armband does appear to be adjustable (it reminds me of a blood-ressuren cuff.) Also, the person in the picture is wearing a short-sleeved shirt. In cold weather, would you wear it over your shirt and sweater, or would you have to roll up your sleeves. I don't even like wearing an ID badge.