Until Microsoft"s Smart Watch, I"d never seen a product start digging its own grave at its unveiling. It happened at the Consumer Electronics Show a year ago. As a presenter modeled a chunky prototype (bravely declaring that it wasn"t "some geeky tech watch"), a spokesman for Citizen talked up all the great features of these data-enabled gadgets.
But this person"s own choice of timepiece exhibited different priorities: The elegantly slim, stylish watch he wore featured little more than hour and minute hands. It"s now a year later, I"ve just spent three weeks wearing a Smart Watch -- Suunto"s $300 n3 -- and I can"t wait to put my old watch back on, which only looks good and tells time. The n3, like four other, cheaper Smart Watch models, does so much more. Using an internal FM receiver, it pulls down headlines, stock quotes, my schedule, instant messages and more, then displays all this data on a sharp, 11/4-inch diameter LCD.