Company:	Swatch
Website:	www.swatch.com
Price:	$150
Pros:
Your traditional watch plus the ability to receive data from the MSN Direct service.
Cons:
Bulky and fairly heavy, interface a bit difficult to see.
Score:	3

When you are running around town do you need to have the latest stock indices on hand? Do you want to know the latest ball game score? Do you want to know the weather forecast for the next two days? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then the Swatch Paparazzi watch running the MSN Direct service is for you.

This watch is rather large and the straps were too big to fit any of our testers' wrist. It took us a long time to get used to the size and the weight. It has four navigation buttons round the edges of the watch and a light button which is useful for using the watch in poor lighting conditions that reverses the screen image when lit.

This is one of the series of watches that use the MSN Direct service to provide near real time information on a number of topics, called channels, like the stock market indexes, today's weather forecast, news, movies, sports, lottery, horoscope, diversions, messages, calendar, watch faces and glance. The OS of the MSN Direct watches is the same for all types available from different vendors, the only real difference is the watch faces that they offer.

A total of 12 channels of content are available each for different subjects and each requiring certain amount of memory in the watch. This memory is managed and displayed in the MSN Direct channel setup page.

After charging the watch for the first time with the supplied power connectors, we had to set it up to sync with the MSN Direct service. First we had to set up an account with MSN Direct. This account is the same as the .NET Passport account. So if you have a .NET account, you do not need to set a new one up.

We had to register the watch with the MSN Direct site (www.msndirect.com) before it could receive data. The watch has its own unique ID. This can be retrieved by pressing NEXT or PREVIOUS buttons until you reach the REGISTER channel option, once selected it shows the watch ID. We entered the watch ID in the MSN Direct registration screen. In addition to registering the watch ID, we had to go through the ACTIVATION process on the MSN Direct.

It's very important to understand that, unlike cell phones, blackberries or even 2-way pagers, the Swatch Paparazzi is a receiver only device; therefore most of its setup is done on the MSN Direct site.
We also tried to interface the watch with MSN Messenger. It took us over 2 hours to setup MSN Messenger to be able to send messages to the watch. This only works with MSN Messenger and not with Windows Messenger (there is a difference between the two if you did not know!!). The other problem was that when we tried to send a message from another computer, using MSN Messenger, its icon was not there. The help page told us that once we IM between the two computers (the one with the watch registered and the one without) they would sync and both will be able to send messages to the watch. But alas that did not happen in our test.

We tried sending a few messages and found that on average they took about 2 minutes to arrive at the watch. Some users might find it acceptable, others an eternity. Any Messages and News could be deleted by pressing and holding the ENTER button. Once MSN Direct was setup, a Sync icon appears in Outlook. This allows syncing of the Outlook Calendar with the APPOINTMENTS channel. Once we synced our Calendar, we could see our appointments on the watch. We found this very useful for the day's appointments, and we could see yesterday's and tomorrows appointments. A nice feature would have been to be able to see the rest of the week's appointments.

Generally, if you select a new channel that needs to be downloaded these data transfers take some time to be delivered to the watch The service claims it takes up to 12 hours to receive messages in the watch. However, our experience showed that in most cases this was much shorter time.

If you are a sports fan or are playing the stock market, this watch helps you get near real time information. Otherwise, for finding what my local cinema is showing, or what the latest news is, your computer or cell phone might be a better option.