Please read the whole description (and no, I have no idea why Youtube didn't record this in its entirety, or why it didn't get the category right, so I get to type it again). Ugh. What I typed the first time was so much better written as well.
Aaaanyway...
As a youngster, I was fascinated by barcode scanners in the stores where my parents shopped. At the time, my young mind had yet to develop a sense of practicality and I wanted one of those scanners (and maybe even the conveyor belt) at home. (Stop looking at me like that...!)
Scanners like this handheld one usually cost a few hundred dollars brand new. Used ones can be had, but many are rather well used and may not work so well any longer. The main reason for average people to buy them is for use with specialized software (such as Delicious Library) that will catalog massive collections of books, music, movies and other bar-coded items. And maybe I'll do that someday.
If you can find the old :CRQ CueCat device (RadioShack had these available in stores and I think they were free -- and if you didn't get one there, you might have gotten one with some magazine subscriptions of the time) it can be hacked to do the same kind of thing very easily.
