The future of shopping is here today. It's a retail craze that is sweeping the country and if you haven't seen it yet, you can find it at the airport, the Las Vegas Hilton, and several other hotels in town.

It is a vending machine for high tech and high end products. If you want some expensive perfume, no problem. If you want a new iPod, no prob. If you want a portable DVD player, no problem. If you want accessories for your device, no problem. In less than a month, these vending machines sold over $100,000 worth of merchandise at the airport.

I have seen the machines around town. I have not made any purchases yet. I do remember one Thanksgiving week, I stayed at the 4 Seasons and needed a modem for my laptop. I had to take my rental car to Best Buy at the mall to get one. And I had to fight holiday traffic on the road and in the store all the way. I would have been delighted if there was an option to get one from a machine in the hotel. That laptop and modem are long outdated now. The point is that sometimes you need/want something and you want it fast.

Prices are supposed to be competitive to retail stores. Returns, refunds, etc. are handled by 800 number, much like an internet purchase.

I took a good look at one of these machines at the Hilton last night. You can buy a camcorder for under $400. You can buy still cameras. The iPod Nano, Shuffle, and iTouch seemed to be standard Apple prices and they had most of the colors in stock. There were lots of earbuds from cheapo to high quality. There were lots of chargers, speakers, and other iPod add ons.

The machine has an informative touch screen shopping guide that has instructions, details, return policies, etc.

I did not see purfume or DVD players that I saw in the news article. I did see where some items were sold out.

I bought nothing but thought of another use. It is open 24/7.

I always got a kick out of the flower machines at the airport too. Nothing like planning ahead is what I say! LOL
I beleive they have one of them at the Hilton as well, right beside the ipod machine???

They have machines like this at Macy's department stores in Chicago, although it's mostly just the iPod and Apple products. I don't recall seeing anything other than electronics.

And along with those machines I recently saw a Coke machine with a credit card slot. I guess the price of vending machine soda is getting expensive enough to justify a credit card purchase.

Speaking of i-pod machines...
At the Atlanta airport, 3 mature guys, all had there faces pressed against the machine looking and pointing at all the gadgits inside. Reminded me of kids outside a candy store! LOL BTW, one of them was making a purchase!

The only problem with buying an I-pod at the airport if you forget yours at home is there will be none of your music downloaded to it.

As far as the Coke machine with a CC slot, I guess there's a lot of people that don't carry cash anymore. I know I have to remember to pick up some cash before we travel. I very rarely have any on me any more, prefering just to use a CC and pay the bill at the end of the month. All those FF miles from CC purchases add up over time.