X
Tech

Are you ready for a wrist-mounted computer?

Ridgeline, a specialist in rugged industrial computers, has announced the W200 wrist-mounted computer. Are you ready for a wrist-mounted computer?
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer

Ridgeline, a specialist in rugged industrial computers, has announced the W200 wrist-mounted computer. Are you ready for a wrist-mounted computer?

w20020wearable20computersmall.jpg
The W200 has a pretty sweet spec. Manufactured from magnesium alloy, it boasts a 3.5 inch touch-sensitive screen, backlit keyboard, hot-swappable battery pack, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. All that's left for you to do is pick the OS - Windows CE or Linux.

Now, the W200 isn't a consumer product, but if you added a cellphone, a camera,  support for video playback, a port for removable storage (Compact Flash or SD card), and throw in a few games and you have a pretty sweet consumer device. Slap on an Apple logo and you have a sure-fire winner.

But would people buy a wrist-mounted computer? After all, anything like this has the potential to make you look like Leelaor Joe 90., and the W200 looks huge. That said, some of the early Garmin Forerunner GPS devices were huge (except for the wrist strap which was too small to fit on my wrist ... but I'm not the typical build for a runner) so there are some people who are happy to walk around with a device strapped to their wrist. Given a robust design and a good set of features, I could see myself using one.

Would you wallk around with a wrist-mounted computer? What would be your OS of choice?

Editorial standards