My SPOT Watch: I love it, even if it's ugly

I absolutely love my SPOT watch, the Abacus model by Fossil. But, it wasn't always that way. In fact, I was quite resistant to the adoption of my watch.

In the beginning, when Peter suggested that I wear his watch, I wanted to shout "No, No, No!". For a number of somewhat superficial reasons, now that I think about it: First, it's huge compared to the types of watches that I typically wear. Second, in my somewhat fashionable opinion (at least I like to think so), it's very ugly. But those were my only two reasons. I started out wearing it mostly as an experiment, to see if I would use it. I honestly didn't think that I would be wearing it for more than a week. That was almost 3 months ago, and I'm still wearing it.

My SPOT watch has a lot of nifty features. However, I really don't use a lot of them. I mainly use the News and Weather channels, messaging, and now I'm using the Calendar feature because Peter helped set up my synching between Tablet, SPOT, phone, and PDA (wow am I techie). I'm not sure how I like that yet, so I'll form my opinion on that later. My News channel receives local and national headlines, business news, and entertainment news (not to thrilled with the last one, never very entertaining to me). Although I could put the watch on Glance and see through the various channels, I have found that I prefer to keep it on time and then change it to the News channel when I want to read it.

Although I never thought of myself as a weather fan, I really like the weather channel. I always check it out in the mornings before getting ready for school (I teach high school), and pick out my clothing accordingly. My watch is set up to receive the current weather, the wind chill, sunrise/sunset times, and the weather forecast. I also have it set up to receive weather information from my favorite cities, Seattle and Prague.

I can't say enough about how much I love the Messaging feature. But at the same time, as the messaging is only one-way, there really isn't too much to say about it! However, I love being able to get messages from Peter throughout the day. I'm also excited to hear my watch beep and check my message. (Even if it is just reminding me about something I should pick up on the way home from work).

Another feature I have found to be very useful is the Timer. I use this ALL the time with my students. We do activities called warm-ups in the beginning of class and I'll give them 5-10 minutes to complete the activity and it beeps just loud enough for a class full of quiet (yeah right!) high school students to hear and finish up their work. I also use it throughout my classes because we do a lot of timed group work as well.

I don't have too many complaints about my watch. Style, well, I've actually gotten used to it. In fact, I'm such a geek girl, I'd probably wear it out dressed up at this point. The problem is, once you've gotten a SPOT watch, you're hooked. At least I have been. Why wear a normal watch, when this one receives news, entertainment, weather, messages, and holds my appointments? It makes all other watches seem so overrated. Take that Rolex!!

More to follow on using the Calendar.