Reading my spam folder

Occasionally, when the mood takes me, I read the spam in my spam folder for laughs. Amidst the usual viagra and star's breasts spam, there was some C-Net spam. I can hear the wail going up now "but c-net isn't a spammer" but yes they are. Anybody that sends me email that I repeadedly don't read is a spammer. Heck, I was chatting to the director of the company I work for and he referenced some email that the company churns out. I told him I had not read it because I get so much email. Truth is I refuse to read company email in my personal time and since the company won't allow employees to read email during work time, I'm never going to read their emails.

But getting back to the point, this email was all about smart watches. They were discussing the latest trends and some shocking prices. There was also some discussion about every manufacturer making a smart watch and the public being somewhat reluctant to buy them.

One of the smart watches discussed was $1,195. Yes twelve hundred dollars! For that price I could buy 120 cheap Timex watches and break one a week for the next 30 months. Equally I could buy a Rolex and be able to show off what a pretentious snob I had just become. Or I could buy a $1200 smart watch that screams "I was born yesterday - take me for a ride".

Thus far aside from a couple of students who were playing with their smart watches in a very pretentious and attention-grabbing manner, I have seen no smart watches in use and none in the stores. I'm not really sure quite how they're any advantage over my 2003 Lorus Quartz watch with its luminous hands and date display (that's never right because I never check nor update it when a month has less than 31 days). My Lorus tells me the time. I'm not sure if a smartwatch even has a clock on it as the promotional displays always seem to show a picture of somebody's child on the face. My Lorus needs a new battery every 18 months and can be submerged to a depth of 100 meters. I've never done anything more than splashed water on it so I can't check that grandiose claim.

There's all the talk about being able to see the display - at a time when people are demanding phones with bigger screens because they can't see the display clearly. Then there's this whole bluetooth connectivity thing. Bluetooth eats batteries. This is why bluetooth headsets came in and have largely vanished. The smartwatch will connect to your smart phone. Your smartphone will become rather hot as it uses power to run bluetooth to power a smart watch with a battery that barely lasts a day.

I bet somebody will come out with a smartphone app that works as a viewfinder for a camera that enables people to take photographs up the skirts of unsuspecting woman. I see absolutely no use for smartwatches and will continue to use my old Lorus untl it dies. Then and only then will I consider a replacement.

The future of smartwatches? They could well be the Filofax that was usurped by the PDA that vanished then was replaced a few years later by the smartphone. The only problem - the smartwatch seems to serve no function other than as a toy.