Indeed. Things have radically changed in the embedded market since this time.
For starters, even WindRiver is selling embedded Linux. Customers got tired of the "How much do you make? Yeah, we'll take 10% of that" business model.
You could synchronize the data on your computer and your watch by facing the watch's screen toward your monitor's, starting some epilepsy program, then witnessing your invisible data fly into the watch. I thought it was pretty high-tech back then. And only through the power of pointing something at something else was this possible.
Ah, the Timex Datalink. I had one as well. Even managed to reverse engineer enough of the protocol to roll my own led blinker in some embedded hardware, allowing me to do a daily time sync without the PC.
