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Wireless Shopping Carts Run Windows CE

An anonymous reader writes "Fujitsu has introduced a self-service retail scanner that could make long checkout lines a relic of the past. The U-Scan Shopper is a ruggedized XScale-based wireless computer with an integral bar code scanner, running Windows CE 4.2, and mounted on a shopping cart. The company even suggests that customers might upload a shopping list to the store's website before leaving home, and then download the list to the shopping cart upon arriving at the store."

2 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. So now cities can Gripe about... by CygnusXII · · Score: 5, Funny

    So now Cities that have fines for shopping cart being off the premises, can fine a business for Toxic Materials being improperly stored, retained or looked after. On the other hand, the homeless can really look forward to retasking the devices and get internet access.

    --
    My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
  2. Re:The only downside is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Unrelated to the idea of a crashing shopping cart, but I'm reminded of a little stunt many university friends and I pulled at one of our local supermarkets, Coles.

    about a year ago I went through the checkouts and when a pack of jellybeans was scanned, the register bluescreened. I sniggered a little, but hey - I'm accepting - sometimes these things crash. It took the register guy a few minutes to get the attention of a supervisor ("It's gone blue again!") to reset the register, call up the previous parts of my shopping, and get things going again.

    Supervisor re-scanned the jellybeans, and it bluescreened again. Ha!. Next time around he just entered a generic confectionary code and I went on my way. That was kinda cool, and getting back to dorms we had a laugh about it, and decided to all head down at some random busy time and try the same again.

    It was cool! eight of us all went through different registers at about the same time, all bluescreening one after another with packets of Candy Lane Jellybeans.

    DDoSing a supermarket, it was cool!