Is there a good, reasonably priced scanner I can buy to do it myself?

President Bush may have been flummoxed by a supermarket price scanner, but that was an exceptional case.

The check out lines at the supermarket have cob webs growing over the bar code price scanner.

Some stores, like Macy's and Target, have resisted self-checkouts, although they do provide price scanners on the selling floors so that customers can check prices.

The 4180 has a maximum optical resolution of 4,800 dots per inch, which is two to four times the resolution of most comparably priced scanners.

Along with the implementation of new technology (price scanners that double as iris scanners), these measures can assure that our Safeways live up to their name.

With technological advances, such as the use of price scanners in stores and the proliferation of powerful personal computers, it has become easier to manipulate data and apply the theory.

The only comparably priced scanner that can accept film bigger than 35-millimeter is Umax Technologies' Astra 4450 scanner ($130), which works with only Windows computers.

His father retired as a regional sales director in Pompton Plains, N.J., for Monarch Marking Systems, a maker of bar-code equipment and price scanners.

San Diego County has even gone beyond what's required by the state, initiating fees paid by businesses that use price scanners to cover the cost of three full-time inspectors who check scanning equipment.

However, groups representing supermarkets say automatic price scanners have removed the need for individual pricing - consumers get receipts detailing the prices, they point out - and they say that the pricing requirements raise costs.

Once limited mostly to meat packers, poultry workers and pianists, it has become a common complaint among workers who use computers or computerized equipment - for example, supermarket checkout clerks, who repeatedly slide customers' purchases over price scanners.

Also during the 1980s, computer technology helped the chain distinguish itself as an innovator, with such in-store additions as electronic price scanners, which not only facilitated the check out process but also generated reports to management on product sales and reordering needs.

The proposed law in Illinois - the Retail Consumer Protection Act of 2006 - would establish fines of up to $5,000 for each price scanner incident and require every store to name one employee to verify that shelf prices and checkout prices are the same.

But in 2003, when Terry J. Lundgren became the chief executive of Federated, he instituted a program called Reinvent that required the renovation of Macy's dressing rooms, the widening of aisles and the use of price scanners to make shopping more convenient.

Freedman was a consulting or testifying expert on statistics in disputes involving employment discrimination, fair loan practices, voting rights, duplicate signatures on petitions, railroad taxation, ecological inference, flight patterns of golf balls, price scanner errors, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow disease), and sampling.

The Senate version, for example, would allow any county to "opt out" of the law's requirements, and it would allow a supermarket to have as much as a 5 percent error rate in its price scanners - a difference between the tagged price and the price a scanner rings up - before facing penalties.

Disturbed by news coverage suggesting that President Bush was amazed to see an ordinary grocery price scanner, the White House for the last week has maintained that he was impressed by a new generation of high-technology devices and not the type most people see every time they go to the supermarket.

THEY ARE out there, 11 inspectors from the Westchester County Consumer Protection Department, insuring that consumers are not shortchanged on meat or gasoline, that home improvement contractors are licensed, that price scanners are accurate and that businesses are complying with the county's Consumer Code.