My dive watch is a Suunto. The most complicated thing I've ever owned. It has 4 buttons along the perimeter pluse a heavy computer that tells you all you will ever want to know on a dive. Each button has many functions to it and you have to do the buttons in sequence if you can remember. If you know how to use it it has all the dive plans one needs with decompression stops, safety stops, water temperature, alarms upon ascending too quickly or when a shark is fast approaching to eat you. I remember the old dive watches that had the Navy decompression tables right on the band and if in reasonably good shape you could pretty much follow them and avoid trouble. But today everybody is in love with technology and the more you can put on a watch the better it will sell. I will show my age here but long before you even had to be certified we would dive all the time with "bottles"-as we free divers called them-They had a "j-valve" which was a long piece of metal attached to the "bottle" and when your breathing told you that you were sucking air you simply pulled on the j-valve and you had another 5 minutes or so to slowly climb to the surface. But then people started drowning and then became certification and then became computers attached to the hoses and then became the watches with just about every thing you would ever need right on your watch-if you know how to get to it.
I'm such a curmudgeon that I think the sport would actually be safer if it were not so "safe proof". I've been on too many rescues where the deceased was only in the water because he or she had all the technical stuff to tell him when he or she was in trouble.
End of my rant since this likely has zilch to do with the topic.
