Mark Fussell, my former boss, has a post entitled Smart Watch Frustration - A Christmas tale of where he talks about the various problems he's had with an MSN Direct SmartWatch. He writes  

I wander into the company store and excitedly purchase a Fossil FX-3001 at the end of Dec 2003. I have to wait 4 weeks before I receive it, so it was a belated christmas present.

I receive watch one in Jan, the plastic/metal carton nearly kills me, but I activate it and procede to continuously show my work mates how great it is and how I know exaclty where to be for my next meeting.

End of Jan 2004 - watch one goes blank and stops working entirely. Not a hint of life. I send it to the Fossil repair center. 

Feb 2004 - Get new watch two, register it, continue to enjoy it and proudly show it off again, especially to Arpan, who desparately wants one. 

Feb 2004 - Watch two starts to reset on an hourly basis to 12pm 1/1/2001, rendering it useless. I send it to the Fossil repair center again.

March 2004 - Get new watch three, register it and enjoy it and tentively showing it off. By now everyone is uninterested in it.

May 2004 - Watch starts to reset on a 2-3 hourly basis. Worse still I start to tell people the wrong time and cause confusing including one old lady in the street who asked my the time and then argued that I was wrong. I should have agreed with her. 

May 2004 - Nov 2004 - I suffer watch three.Whilst it is in a good reception area (i.e. around my home) it works Ok. If I go anywhere out of reception range (i.e. the steel buildings at work, 20 miles north of my house or the UK) the watch becomes immediately useless, resetting to 12pm 1/1/2001 continuously. i.e. it is not even a watch.

Nov 2004 - I give up. I send watch three to the Fossil repair center having spent 30 minutes on the phone with a technican trying to "fix" it.

Dec 2004 - Get new watch four which is a new design, the FX-3005. The clasp must have been invented by someone from the Spanish Inquisition and it takes me about 10 minutes to figure out how to open and close it. I take watch four out of its brand new box and set it onto the charger. There is no comforting "beep" to indicate that it is charging. I spend 1 hour trying every combination and position on the charger. The next day I speak to the Fossil technical help desk and they determine, as I did the night before, that watch four is a lifeless heap of metal and plastic.  I sent it to the Fossil repair center.

Dec 22nd 2004 - I recieve watch five which is also a new FX-3005. Curiously this one is not in a new box and is simply wrapped in bubble wrap. I take it out and note that it is ready charged, but at least it is working, being careful not to slash my wrist with the dangerous metal clasp. I leave it to charge overnight and sync my personal settings.

Dec23rd - In the morning I note that it still has not synced my settings, so I go to register the watch ID on the MSD Direct site. Worringly it replies that this watch is already registered. No problem, I phone MSN Direct. To cut a 40 minute conversation short, I am told to 'reboot' the watch by continuously pressing three painful buttons (it takes 9 attempts)  to generate a new 'dynamic' ID for the watch. It turns out that this is all in futility. And here is the crux. This watch was previously owned(by the ID) and the icing on the cake is that the ID cannot be reset and assigned to my account. I am told by the help desk that the only thing that I can do is send it back to the Fossil repair center. Aaaaargh.Aaaaargh.Aaaaargh

I witnessed a lot of this first hand and I was stunned at how problematic these watches were for Mark. The initial lure of the SmartWatch to Mark was having a useful, internet-connected device that would automatically track his schedule as well as keep up with news and sports scores. I also had a need for such a decide but decided to go with a SmartPhone instead.

So far my AudioVox SMT 5600 has worked like a charm. It's a phone, a camera, it syncs with Outlook wirelessly so I always have an up to date email and calendar, it tracks traffic density, it can be used to catch up on news when I'm bored while I'm stuck waiting somewhere, and I've even used it to hit Google once or twice while on the go. Plus the form factor is all that and a bag of chips.

I should to talk Mark into giving up on the SmartWatches and going for a SmartPhone instead.