HARDWARE
PlanetRx is the first company to adopt CS 2000, a personal barcode scanner made by Symbol Technologies, for home shopping. The idea is that you connect this Trek-ish phaser to your computer, point it at items around the house - a book, a bottle, or even this magazine - and hit a button to automatically order more online.
Alas, there's a gap between theory and practice. The upload software requires the hefty Java 1.2.2, which must be downloaded from Sun's site. Not a major annoyance until I discovered that PlanetRx's ScanCart applet was slow and buggy and that I had persistent problems talking to the scanner through my computer's serial port. An hour later, I finally got it to work, only to discover that PlanetRx didn't carry the majority of household supplies I needed. For now, I'll stick with a laundry list.
CS 2000: $99. Symbol Technologies: www.symbol.com/consumer.
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