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Fossil to revive PalmOS PDA wristwatch line

Vapourware no more?

Fossil's first line of Palm OS-based wristwatches were canned before they ever shipped, but it looks like the watchmaker is planning to make another attempt to bring them to market.

The company has updated its website and once again features the three Wrist PDA models - Sport, Dress and Casual. The designs and specifications - 2MB of RAM, 2MB of Flash, PalmOS 4.1, 33MHz Motorola Dragonball VZ CPU, 160 x 160 16-greyscale LCD - appear to be the same as before.

However, where the site once described the watches as being no longer available, it now reads: "The next line of Wrist PDA and Wrist PDA/PC watches will arrive later this year."

Fossil announced the Wrist PDA series in November 2002 and said they would ship the following summer. Come June 2003, and the company told The Register they had been put back to January 2004. However, Fossil quickly retracted its statement, claiming instead that the timepieces would go on sale that very month.

What followed was a saga of delay after delay, with Fossil's exclusive Wrist PDA online retail partner, Amazon, dropping the products, and culminating in an admission that they were "no longer available", in January 2004. Before that date, Fossil blamed its manufacturer, Flextronics, for the ongoing issues that prevented it from keeping its ship-date promises.

In the meantime, it has shipped its line of Wrist NET data watches, which tap into information broadcast on the FM band by Microsoft's MSN. ®

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