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eSuds

Posted by michael on from the tiny-bubbles dept.

AndyAMPohl writes "An article from Yahoo! News mentions IBM plugging washers and dryers into the internet. This has several advantages: coins aren't needed since credit cards are accepted, the machines can be monitored through the web for maintenance purposes and to see if there are any machines available, and users can even control things like add soap!" The eSuds homepage has informations, FAQs, etc.

3 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. This is ignoring... by Foggy+Tristan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The need to actually get up, walk to the machine, and put clothes in the washer, as well as take them out and put them in the dryer.

    A laundromat near me has gone the route of laundry cards that you can fill up with money...it eliminates the need to use quarters, as you can choose to put $10s or $20s on.

    As far as dispensing soap from the internet, I don't really get this...I'm going to go to the laundromat, put my clothes in, go back to my room, start up my computer, then indicate I want soap? What if I want a different brand of soap?

    Bah, progress.

    --
    Beware typoes.
  2. umm... by Triv · · Score: 4, Insightful

    (Note: I didn't RTFA. You've been warned)

    Ok, so I can see the advantages, what with the machines taking credit cards, etc, but it seems kinda silly to me. You still need to be there to load the friggin' thing up after all, so you might as well pay with cash, and personally I'm not so anal with my laundry that there's a specific point in the cycle I need to add soap. laundry+soap=clean, I don't need to add such a pesky variable as soaptime.

    If the whole point is to reduce work then they need to eliminate the trip itself - once you're physically there, anything else you need to do (soap, paying) doesn't change the fact that I've hauled 30 pounds of laundry three blocks, waited around for an hour and hauled it back. Besides, they don't need to be connected to the 'net proper to take creditcards - a plain vanilla phone line to the creditcard company's server will do just fine.

    I'm not saying this isn't a cool hack, the epitome of geek, but I'm not going to be really impressed until a robot picks up my laundry, washes it, debits my creditcard and returns it, preferably folded.

    Triv

    1. Re:umm... by Erasmus+Darwin · · Score: 3, Insightful
      "(Note: I didn't RTFA. You've been warned)"

      That's pretty obvious, as your points are mostly addressed by the first two paragraphs of the article. Cash isn't always convenient (as people sometimes don't have enough change for the machine), the site lets you know if machines are available (as people don't want to drag their 30 pounds of laundry down there only to discover all the machines are full), and it lets you know when your laundry's done (as people generally have better things to do than sit in a laundromat and wait).