RE: Barcode scanners...have I missed something here?

["Dr John Tankard" <john@xxxxxxx>]

> But here's the big one, I was talking to a rep for Lux and
> they said that one of the biggest problems they had with the
> product was getting people to *actually* remember to scan
> everything! Bear in mind that in order for the fridge to
> track every item it has to know where every item is and if
> you used it or not, miss one or two and the whole inventory
> is up the spout. The other problem mentioned, that seems a
> real problem, is how on earth do you keep track of a carton
> of milk? Think about it, I could make macaroni & cheese and
> use a pint, or I could make tea and use
> >100ml or I could make a latte and use 1/4 of a pint...the barcode
> reader just doesn't know and to let it know you have to
> manually enter the amount used! To me this kinda defeats the
> purpose of the exercise, i.e. automating the whole process,
> does it not?
>
>

I don't use barcodes I use ListPro, it is a great list prog works on a
PC or ipaq, both my wife and I use ipaq's, the program comes with a good
shopping template. You can beam lists or doc and sync with the pc. The
program looks like a spreadsheet but has two special columns one is a
flag the other is a checkmark, we start with a weekly shop list with
flags set for the stuff we normally buy every week, as use stuff we
check other stuff in the list, when you go shopping you switch on flags
only, this removes anything from the list you don't need then as you go
round the shop you tick off the items you pick, they disappear from the
view so the list only shows what you still need.

The smart bit is that you have a column for shop location so you click
on the heading and the items are in the order you find them in the shop,
there is columns for home location so when at home you can go to say the
fridge section and a quick scan down the list and the contents of the
fridge lets you check what you need. The list programme handles multiple
shops with different orders so you are not tied to one shop.

There are only two things I don't like about it:-

1) you have to manually put in the shop location, it would be good if
you could to a training trip where it automatically selects a sequence
number as you do the first shop.

2) you can only sync a whole list and not just part of it. I would be
good it it would merge two.

John




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