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Hardware

Affordable Wearables May Arrive By Christmas 68

Posted by timothy from the stop-wincing-in-disbelief dept.
Rhinobird writes: "I was just catching up on some stuff and ran across this article on New Scientist. It describes a new Hitachi wearable computer which is planned for a release of Christmas 2001. More info can be found at Hitachi's site here(1) and here(2)." These will come with Windows CE officially, but unofficially, how long could it take to make them run other OSes as well? At $2000, wearables might finally hit a lot of toylists.
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Affordable Wearables May Arrive By Christmas More

Affordable Wearables May Arrive By Christmas

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  • Uh-oh (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lynx0 ( 316733 ) on Sunday August 05, 2001 @04:25PM (#2112519)
    I won't buy one of those - I can imagine walking down the street surfing the web, an then being attacked by some drunkard yelling: It's the Borg, get 'em!

  • Great! (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Spackler ( 223562 )
    And then (seeing they are running a Microsoft OS), CodeRed III r00ts them all, and everybody turns into remote Zombies attacking anything open source!

    No Thanks!

  • bah (Score:1)

    by khuber ( 5664 )
    I submitted this weeks ago and it was rejected.

    -Kevin

  • The best and only wearable... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dr_labrat ( 15478 ) <spooner@g m a i l .com> on Sunday August 05, 2001 @04:23PM (#2122358) Homepage
    Those baseball hats that carry 2 cans of beer are the pinnacle of wearable utilities... Affordable too!

  • great (Score:3, Funny)

    by mbadolato ( 105588 ) on Sunday August 05, 2001 @04:22PM (#2124492)
    These will come with Windows CE officially Great, can't wait til I have to piss really bad an can't unzip my pants due to a BSOD =)
  • In US lawyers will have field day with these.
    I forsee X billon dollas lawsuits of people claiming
    their eyesight was damager, or they simply crashed their
    car while browsing porno sites while driving.

  • The FaQ says that the display is only for one eye and is semi-transparent. I'd somehow prefer a display that extends over both eyes; screw both my eyes at the same time.
    • Where do these displays exist? I want a little display that will support at least 640x480 resolution (and color) but I'm having trouble finding one for under $3000.
    • These displays exist. You'd have to purchase them separately from the WIA, however.

      Just IMO, but I believe one of the reasons they opted for one screen instead of two is battery life.
  • How long do you think it'll be until there are law's against wearable computer's while driving like the NY cell phone ban. If talking on the phone is distracting, what about P0RN!!

  • IBM prototype (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lumpish Scholar ( 17107 ) on Sunday August 05, 2001 @04:25PM (#2126345) Homepage Journal
    Here [yahoo.com] is a photo of an IBM prototype.

    Interesting example display (tiny, very clear, may be a complete mock up): I can't tell whether or not it's MS Windows, but it's surely Netscape.
    • That screen is so obviously a screenshot from a PC rotated and softened. It is much less sharp than the 'IBM' logo and it's not reflecting any hilights or showing any lowlights.

      And it is windows.
    • It's windows. You can tell by the scrollbar in Netscape. Jason.
      • Yup, the window decorations and the docking bar with start button down at the bottom, and system tray to the bottom right all point to it being Windows (could be an X WM that tries really hard to look like Windows, but unlikely). Anyway it definately looks a lot more like a mockup than a real prototype.
        • That's not the start button and icon tray at the bottom. It is Netscape's status bar. I do realize it could be a window manager with Windowsish window frames, which is why I looked at Netscape's scrollbar, which is a dead giveaway.

          At any rate, this discussion is completely pedantic and entirely moot. :)

          Jason.
    • It's a color printout of a Netscape window grabbed from a Windows computer stuck under a transparent piece of plastic. That's how these "prototypes" (mock-ups) are created. You can make one of those yourself with a bit of balsa wood, a good color printer, some paint, and some plastic. If you are a good salesperson, you can even get VC funding for it. What's holding back the actual creation of these devices is cost and availability of parts. Are you willing to have such a device if it costs $5000 and has a battery life of 1/2h? I didn't think so. That's why Compaq is producing the iPaq and Sony is producing the Clie.

  • How soon we forget! You can get the source [slashdot.org] to Windows CE and modify it to do whatever you want (not BSOD, for example). And IIRC, you can distribute any modified code, as long as it isnt for commercial use.

    Wouldn't it be much simpler to linux-ify Windows CE, than to CE-ify Linux?

  • A google search on "Shimadzu HMD" turns up this page [shimadzu.co.jp] (http://www.shimadzu.co.jp/products/aero/hmd/) with an artist concept of the display, and this pessimistic note [blu.org] (http://wearables.blu.org/wear-hard-00/20005171.ht ml) about availability.

    If I'm correctly decoding the URL of the pessimistic note, it's a year old.

  • Porting is straightforward. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Sunday August 05, 2001 @04:32PM (#2151133)
    This is just a stock SH4 machine with custom peripherals. *BSD has been ported to many such devices, and so has Linux (Dreamcast being the first that comes to mind, but there are SH4-based PDAs which are probably supported too).

    If demand exists, and if the product rolls out in quantity at a decent price point, distributions for pick-your-favourite-*NIX will be out in short order.

    Bear in mind that all we've seen as a "license agreement ... to develop" a device like this. They look serious about it, but for now, it's still vapour.
  • They fit under your skin, are projected directly into the visual cortex, and interface directly with the brain for input.

  • Huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kwikymart ( 90332 ) on Sunday August 05, 2001 @04:33PM (#2161985)
    At $2000, wearables might finally hit a lot of toylists.

    For some reason, i first read that as :

    At $2000, wearables might finally hit a lot of toilets

  • wow (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by vectus ( 193351 )
    Never before could you give a Christmas present that says, "Please mug me," more clearly.

    I don't know if I'll be able to afford to give this to both my boss, and my inlaws..

  • I love the idea of wearables. I'm sure most people who are at all acquainted with technology feel that way. But I'm afraid I don't see the market for them at this juncture.

    Just look at the pda market. Palm and Handspring are on their last legs; Apple killed its Newton project; Sony's deriving some marketing value from putting its brand on every dog turd in sight but hasn't made much revenues. What the wearables market is supposed to be two years from now is what the pda market ought to have been two years ago, but instead we're left with a collapsing industry.

    For the most part, people don't want to be chained to a machine of any sort. They'll spend obscene amounts of money on a computer they can shove under their desk, but they can't bear to carry one in their back pocket. To draw another analogy, look at the cellphone market. A few years ago, everyone was all excited about having one. Today, people purposefully leave theirs at home so they don't have to be just a phonecall away from the office.

    Frankly, it'll be at least a decade before people start being amenable to the idea of integrating technological augmentations into their own personal space like that -- about how long it'll take for the generation weaned on mainstream internet usage to have an income to buy these things with. Before then, I'm just not holding my breath.
    • Flight mechanics of Lufthansa use wearables.
      Guards at the mexican border use wearables.
      Soldiers in Kosovo use wearables.

      Maybe you're looking the wrong way?
    • Just look at the pda market. Palm and Handspring are on their last legs;

      PDAs are very successful. The problem that Palm and Handspring are facing is that they are trying to sell $50 consumer gadgets for $500, by trying to build on the widespread acceptance of their OS among handheld developers. Too bad for them that they are facing a competitor that's better at that game...

  • The Tiqit [tiqit.com] computer is a little slower, but its cheaper, and it comes w/ linux pre-installed. no display is included, but you can get vga headmounted displays...

  • Great... a wrist watch that requires 128 megs of ram and a 400 mhz processor. And how are you supposed to tell the time when it locks up? Really though... what the hell would you use one of those for... I mean, you wouldn't even use a palm when you are wandering around. I wouldn't anyway... probably trip over something and it'd end up in the middle of traffic.

  • Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Z4rd0Z ( 211373 )
    $2000? For fuck's sake why would I pay that for an underpowered little computer? For that money I could have two or three high powered desktop systems, or better yet, one of those Apple titanium thingies if I wanted something portable.

  • WinCE? Who will make it? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    MS has already collapsed [slashdot.org], and certainly won't be around for Christmas. Who will write the OS for them? Or did MS open source everything before the went under?

  • wearable (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by agdv ( 457752 )
    I'll just wait till they release the underwearable computer, which ought to be *lots* more fun... ;-)
  • http://www.onhandpc.com runs a variant of DOS, and has been available for 2-3 years.

    My current wristtop (that I wear every day) was purchased in 1986 and does log & trig and metric conversions.

    I'll never get used to what is being passed off as "wearable". To me, wearable means wristtop.

  • First, this page has been around since January, see this press release: http://www.superh.com/hsa/Universal/pressrelease/s h-4_wearable_.html [superh.com]

    Second, the linux port (Debian!) for this processor is already stable, homepage: http://www.m17n.org/linux-sh/ [m17n.org], all we'd need to know is what kind of display it will have.

  • They should have included two Compact Flash slots. How am I going to get a 1 gig IBM MicroDrive and a IEEE 802.11b wireless lan card in there at the sime time? $2000 Wearable $400 Microdrive $200 twiddler2 [handykey.com] $35 twiddler2 USB option gives you a small system with a big price tag $2635 but otherwise you are left with too little memory only a mouse input with the base system. It has potential we'll see.
  • I've been pondering building my own wearable for several years now. I was fortunate to have some exposure to Thad Starner [gatech.edu] at Georgia Tech. I saw quite a few variations on the wearable in the halls of the College of Computing, but my main interest was in the "build-your-own" category, for which Thad has a few links for on his web site.

    A $2K price tag is certainly more appealing than a $5K-$6K, but what's the point when you can build your own for less? Laptops are so thin/cheap/powerful these days that, combined with a Twiddler [handykey.com] and some form of audio/video IO, you're set.

    The Hitachi unit, on the other hand, has barely more horsepower than a handheld device. Do you really need a visor-ed CE device for $2K?

  • Guide to Editors Posting Articles on Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Sunday August 05, 2001 @07:37PM (#2162726) Homepage
    CmdrTaco: Ok, guys. Here are the rules.

    Step 1, post a few sentences that bears some semblance to the story:

    "Rhinobird writes: "I was just catching up on some stuff and ran across this article on New Scientist. It describes a new Hitachi wearable computer which is planned for a release of Christmas 2001. More info can be found at Hitachi's site here(1) and here(2).""

    Step 2, obviously post some anti-MS rhetoric. Slashdot readers love that:

    "These will come with Windows CE officially, but unofficially, how long could it take to make them run other OSes as well?"

    Step 3, post some mildly amusing but ultimately annoying "dept." comment:

    ""from the stop-wincing-in-disbelief dept.""

    Wrap it up with another anti-Microsoft spiel if you can. We post at least one Microsoft article daily, and a majority of our readers use IE, so it'd be best to piss them off. Don't worry about the sub-100,000 userID's: those guys will defend us. They never leave.

  • Xybernaut HMD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Peter Amstutz ( 501 ) on Sunday August 05, 2001 @08:01PM (#2162797) Homepage
    I actually work with the Wearable Computing Group at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Most of our research right now is done on wearables from Xybernaut, the company that Hitachi is partnering with as mentioned in the press release. The Xybernaut systems we have now are regular p200s (192MB RAM, 4GB disk, serial/PS2/USB ports, pretty much all the stuff you'd find on a laptop) running Red Hat 6.2. When we got them, they cost about $4000.

    The biggest gripe most people have about them (aside from their general bulk) is the awful Head Mounted Display (HMD) they use. It works by using a small 640x480 LCD display pointing away from you with uses a concave mirror to reflect the image back into your eye. There are a lot of problems with them - it's very hard to get the entire screen in focus and visible, you have this big arm holding the display in front of your face, and it's almost useless in sunlight. There's also the privacy issue of the fact that anyone can just look at the display itself (which, like I said, points away from you) and see a horizontally flipped image of whatever you're currently viewing.

    A useful wearable device, almost more than anything, has to have a display that is easy to wear, small, and unobtrusive. I'm curious as whether this Hitachi device will achive that to a better extent than the current Xybernaut HMD.
  • You could wear running socks running SOCKS

  • Price for toys ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by konmaskisin ( 213498 )
    At $2000, wearables might finally hit a lot of toylists.

    Uhh or if your 18 then you could invest it now and that same 2000$ could help you retire 5 years earlier. As a donation to a worthy cause 2000$ could help build homes in areas of the world hit by natural disasters (where they are often cheaper to build) and pay for medicine where needed ... You could also buy a lot of beer, or chocolate pudding and take at least 20 trips to *really good* restaurants.

    Or of course you could also spend the money on a ***toy computer to wear*** ...

    I guess it really just depends on your priorities.

  • Of course this will never take off. Next thing you know people will start stealing each others jackets. The airports would hate this, and it would be worse than the abusive cell phone users. There is no advantage.

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