On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:39:28 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
had this to say:

In article o.uk,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
Quite agree. After the dreadful experiences of trying to use the ones
in Tesco I just refuse to use them anywhere. They are just so slow,
I'd rather spend the time in a checkout queue relaxed and day
dreaming than getting annoyed at a machine that can't keep up or just
takes too long to respond to each item scanned.

Both the Tesco and Sainsbury ones round here are fine.

What's the alleged advantage of an automated checkout? Clearly it
does away with a humanoid (although they still need to be such around
for, say, alcohol purchases). In RL they seem to be much slower than a
checkout manned by real people. Is it just that most purchasers hate
the idea of having to speak to a real life human cashier? If so,
that's very sad.

--
Frank Erskine