Casio W-800H-1AVDF

I like to think of myself as a thrifty person, but I have just received from a delivery man a wristwatch that I ordered from Ebay. It is the Casio W-800H-1AVDF. All up I paid A$33 for the watch. This price includes postage and handling.

My old watch was running out of batteries. The watch still worked, but the numbers were very dim, which meant I couldn't read it well.



One question I asked myself is whether I needed a watch. Many people say that because we have mobile phones now that display the time there is no need for wristwatches. This is a fair argument. The problem for me is that I don't have my mobile phone with me everywhere I go. For example, at work my mobile phone is banned, so I have to keep it in my bad in my locker. Nevertheless, many of my co-workers flout the rules and bring their mobile phones in. This is a moot point because at work I can easily get the time from the computer as well as several wall clocks.

One place where I need a watch is when I'm in the shower. My mobile phone is not water resistant. It might be able to tolerate a few splashes, but I am sure that it will die if I put it into a stream of shower water. Why do I need to tell the time in the shower? I floss in the shower and I time how long I floss with my stopwatch. I also have another stopwatch running to time how long I take in the shower. This prevents me from using up too much water.



Another time when I need a wristwatch is when I'm exercising on my elliptical trainer. Using a stopwatch, I time how much cardiovascular exercise I do and aim to achieve 210 minutes per week on average. My elliptical trainer faces no wall clocks. While I am on the elliptical trainer I usually leave my mobile phone lying on a table nearby. When I am exercising on the elliptical trainer I cannot see the display on this mobile. I don't like to put the mobile phone in my pockets because that will ruin weight distribution and affect my running.

One problem with relying on time displays from wall clocks is that they could be wrong. In fact, they often are. People care about their own time-keeping devices but don't care about public time-keeping devices. I often see wall clocks at work and then say to a co-workers, "That time is wrong." The co-worker usually just nods and walks away. Usually wall clocks are wrong because they drift away from the proper time and become either slow or fast. Often after daylight savings people don't bother to change them. If you have your own wristwatch you can regularly synchronize it to the time on an atomic clock (via the Internet) and you can walk around certain that you have the right time. However, if you rely on the time-keeping devices of others, you will get contradictory numbers, which adds to uncertainty.



Another use of this watch is when I am in bed and I need to look at the time. The mobile phone is away from my body so when I wake up in the middle of the night I have no idea where it is. However, this watch has an illuminator function that allows the watch to light up with the press of a button. I can check the time even when it is dark.

Another reason why a watch is good is because when you are having coffee, lunch, dinner, or a meeting with others, it is rude to look at the time beuase it signals to them that you want to leave. If you take your mobile phone out of your pocket to look at the time, that is very obvious. However, however a quick glance at your watch can be done with subtlety. You can put your arms on your legs and then look down as if you are tired.

I needed to look at a cheap watch that had all the features I needed, that is, accurate time, stopwatch, water resistant to 50 meters or more, and date display. It is incredible how many expensive watches don't even have these basic features.