The Microsoft SPOT Watch Didn’t Really Hit The Spot!
January 28, 2010 1 Comment Friday, January 29th, 2010, Netcast 1015 Back to Dick’s Gadget Warehouse
This is Sunno Model which cost about $300.It was at CES 2003 that I saw my first SPOT Smart watch. They were called SPOT watches because they used Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology. They could receive information like weather, stock reports, sports scores, horoscopes, etc. over the air via FM radio frequencies. It was an interesting technology, but I still liked my Timex DataLink better for my needs which included uploading info to the watch via USB. You couldn’t do that with the SPOT watches and they had a couple of other drawbacks. They were expensive and they were pretty large. You also had to subscribe to a monthly plan after you bought the watch. A neat feature of the watch was downloadable watch faces, which you could change at will. Companies making SPOT watch included Fossil, Tissot, Swatch,and Sunnto. SPOT technology was also included in some coffeemakers made by Melitta. You could see the day’s weatheryou’re your coffee was brewing. But not only are the watches gone, soon the service will gone too. Here’s info I found the web about the Spot watch service:
Smart Watches for MSN Direct have sold out and are no longer for sale.
While we continue to move forward with MSN Direct and seek out new opportunities for devices that would benefit from the MSN Direct service, we, along with our watch partners, do not have immediate plans to create a new version of the Smart Watch, as we are focused on other areas of our business. We will maintain support of our watch customers and continue to deliver information to Smart Watches, but we do not plan to increase our investment in the watch business going forward. Service will stop after 2012.
Reader Comments (1)
I really liked the idea of this. I even ordered a watch when they got around $100. I kept the service for a year before realizing, "This is stupid."
It seemed like a great idea, though:
- an automatically updated watch
- sports scores could be received as the game was being played
- weather info
- stocks
- famous birthdays / anniversaries
Goofier things:
- Lots of goofy look watch faces.
- News (who wants to read news on their watch?)
- Horoscopes delivered - some may like this, seemed kind of goofy to me.
Problems:
- as Dick stated - it was just too freaking big.
- You had to charge your watch every night. A normal watch you just put on the counter / dresser when you come in. This on you had to hook up the USB dongle /wire so that it would charge overnight.
- a watch just really isn't a good place to deliver that information. You basically want something that you can glance to. "Oh, it's 3PM, Sunny outside, and 59ºF." So you either had to have it cycle through the info (Wait! Now what time is it - oh, in 20 secs it'll have cycled back to the clock) or you could cycle through it manually but that kills the 'at a glance' factor
Leo mentioned it: People no longer wear watches. I don't. If I need to see what time it is I look at my cellphone which, effectively, is a pocket watch. I don't like carrying around a bunch of extra things.