In computer news this week, 11/21/2002

In computer news this week, 12/05/02

Dick Tracy, eat your heart out! The Timex Internet Messenger Watch is here.

First of all I have to explain to you younger people that Dick Tracy was a police detective in the East Coast comic strips when I was kid back in the 50's. At the time he wore a wristwatch that let him receive 2 way radio calls on it, which was one of the coolest things I ever saw. Of course it was all cartoon fantasy - the technology of the time hadn't even thought about pagers or cell phones. A few decades later James Bond movies showed a watch with an alarm on it, and I've been a gadget watch zealot ever since. I'be bought 3 of the Timex ironman watches that talk to your computer and let you download outlooks contacts and phonebooks.

A year ago I did a brief review of what I had read about their Internet Messenger Watch that could actually receive emails and pages, but at the time it was too expensive for me - well over $ 150 - and required you to pay a monthly Skytel paging charge, which at the time didn't cover where I live in Spangle.

Just recently Timex dropped their price and offered one free year of the paging service, which has increased its coverage area, so I bought one. I had read reviews of them on the internet and some of them were pretty negative, mentioning the size of the watch as very big, it used batteries fast, and that you would constantly receive meaningless pages from the Yahoo new service.

However, the watch is actually the same size as my other Timex watch, the batteries are cheap, and you don't have to receive those Yahoo services if you don't want them.

I excitedly opened the small package in my mailbox, and took the watch out and the batteries, and the 3 instruction books that came with it. You have to twist a little door off the back of the watch to put the battery in, and then you have to take the tiny battery out of the supplied package of 4 and let it breathe for 2 minutes before you put in and close back the watch. But then amazingly - the watch talks to a satellite somewhere and sets itself to your time zone - by magic. And if you travel around the country - the watch will change the time for the zone you're in.

I then opened the first little booklet - Timex user guide - and went through learning the features. All the watch features are the same as on my other Timex watch, so this was easy. The internet messenger/paging features were new and interesting, and I was directed to read the next book 2 - Skytel services user guide - to learn how to activate my watch with this 1 year free paging service. I did this easily by going out to their website, entering the serial number off the back of my watch and my regular email address - and in a minute I received an email activating my watch and giving me pin# to use.

The watch was now ready to start receiving. It can receive emails from the internet - which you send as regular emails to my new Timex email address. It can receive pages which you can send by going to the Skytel website and sending a message from their message center to me - up to 180 text characters. And it can receive phone numbers - which are done by people calling the 800 number I received with the watch.

Next week on Raw Bytes I'll tell you how everything worked, or didn't work.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230