Sony are planning to introduce robotic stores (that's vending machines to you and me):



Personally, I'm all for these. How often have we gone into an electronics store, know what we're looking for, having already compared alternatives online, only to have some twit of a sales rep start regurgitating the dumbed-down explanation of how it works that he's clearly misunderstood and has has no idea of what he's really talking about.

And then there's those crazy impulse buys. We're geeks. We see something cool We want it. We can't help ourselves. The sales guy is useless, so whe we ask "is this compatible with X?" we get a blank stare. All we really need to see is the product specification, but the guy looks like he's a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car. But we have to have it, so we take a chance. We should know better because we've been burned before, but we hope tat this time might be different. We get it home, take it out of the box, and we find it has a non-standard connector, so we need to trek back to get the right adapter cable.

How much easier it will be to see our cool gadgets through the glass of a vending machine (sorry, robotic sales assistant), select an item and see all the product specs on an LCD screen, see what adapter cable we need (and will hopefully be hanging on the rack next to our gadget), insert our credit card and bingo, the gadget is ours!

Just like shopping online, but without having to wait for the product to be delivered.Initially there will be seven of them in the US, but eventually they should find their way over here. Personally, I think they're a great idea, and I can hardly wait.

Of course, I'm probably setting myself up for a big let-down.