Make a Dick Tracy of yourself with Fossil

By Rory Reid on 16 November 2005, 11:36am

Most of us had a childhood hero. If you're a girl it might have been Wonder Woman -- with that bright smile and pleasing twirl. If you're a boy it might have been Superman -- lantern jaw and underpants on show.

For the clever watch makers at Fossil, it was clearly Dick Tracy. The company's latest release, the Abacus Wrist PDA, is the spitting image of Tracy's famous gadget watch that first appeared in the classic 1930s comic strip.

The Abacus doesn't have a two-way radio link to your local police station, but it does have a 66MHz CPU and uses Palm OS 4.1. As a result, it can run most Palm OS applications (transferable via USB) and includes an address book, to-do list and calculator -- it'll even tell the time.

The Abacus has a touch-sensitive, 160x160-pixel display and comes with a foldable stylus that tucks neatly into the buckle. If you feel like making a complete fool of yourself on the train, you can use it to scribble notes into the watch, or alternatively just have someone tattoo the word 'geek' into your forehead.

There's an even more exciting version of the Wrist PDA that can automatically update itself with the latest news and weather, stock prices, horoscopes, movie listings and more via an FM radio signal over MSN's Direct (SPOT) service. Sadly, this is only available in the US and Canada, but we live in hope.

If you fancy trading the perfectly adequate organiser features of an ordinary mobile phone for the hugely bulky, ultra-nerdy Abacus, it's available from widget for £69.99. -RR