The INQUIRER Top 5 Tech Wristwatches

BRITNEY SPEARS and Kevin Federline. John Major and Edwina Currie. Victoria Beckham and music. The British and hot weather. Me and DIY. Sometimes you can join things together as an experiment and, no matter how hard you try, they just don't work together, damn it.

Victor Frankenstein succeeded in hacking together a human being but the result wasn't fit for purpose. Just because you can assemble two things to make one, doesn't mean you should. And that brings us, if you'll forgive a crude segue, to the notion of the high-tech wristwatch.

The original notion was impeccable in its intent. For many of us, the wristwatch is the one thing apart from a coat of skin that goes everywhere with us. Ergo, shove a load of computing and communications in there and, presto, you have a covenient home for your personal data, maybe a way to sync, or a device for accessing information over a wireless network. Unfortunately, life isn't as easy as that and the road to wristwatch computing Nirvana has been paved with bunkers and clunkers.

So join us on this trip down memory lane to consider The Top 5 Tech Wristwatches Time Forgot.

5. Swatch The Beep. A big, fat mid-1990s lump of lurid plastic with a small panel that displayed pager messages, this Ugly Duckling never grew up.

4. Timex DataLink. Backed by Microsoft, this was an interesting kludge. It had a large face that let you keep phone numbers, to-do lists and the like. Synchronising with a PC involved holding up the watch to the screen in a manner resembling a bodybuilder clutching dumbells, or the histrionics of a heavy-metal band's front man. Let me tell you, you'd feel pretty silly as colleagues went by and you looked like you were threatening a 14-inch monitor. The DataLink had its supporters but, like a lot of tech wristwatches, it had a way-heavy build. Wear it all day and you felt like you'd done a one-armed shift with a chain gang. With its naff ones-and-zeroes plastic strap design, it also marked you out as a spod.

3. Fossil Palm WristPDA. If you thought the DataLink marked you out as the guy at the party keener to discuss firewalls than football then the Fossil WristPDA is worse again. It comes with an invisible-to-the-wearer sign marked: “Women, Keep Away”, or might as well do. Which is a shame because this is an ingenious design, based on the Palm OS with support for wireless app downloads, and even packing a mini stylus.

2. Microsoft SPOT/MSN Direct watches. The demotion of Microsoft from smartest guys on the block to a company that sometimes lapsed into tech doofus collective status reached its symbolic nadir when Bill Gates announced the SPOT initiative at Comdex 2003. The world was flocking to smartphones and WiFi but Bill wanted to sell you a watch with a 120 x 90-pixel screen and the concept of "glanceable information" based on proprietary data sources. Citizen, Fossil and Suunto built units but Microsoft still only offers SPOT on an FM network operating in parts of north America. Microsoft continues to tout Garmin GPS gadgets, Oregon weather forecast units, and, gulp, Melitta coffee-makers running the same technology. Maybe soon it's going to smell the coffee and put old SPOT out of its misery.

1. Casio Databank. The geeks' favourite brand, Casio has never given up on its mission to put a stash of technology on every wrist. It even has watches with universal remote controls built in. The Databank is for those who order technology, super-size it and add in extra fries. Some models are more like mainframes than wristwatches but wear one of these beauties and you're making a statement to the world. You're saying: “I work in IT and you might laugh but which one of us can consult a database of contacts, find passport and credit card details, and convert currency without moving from this spot?" µ