back to article It liiives! Sorta. Gentle azure glow of Windows XP clocked in Tesco's self-checkouts, no less

OK, so it's not quite Windows for Warships, but Tesco's point-of-sale terminals appear to still be running Windows XP more than two years after Microsoft ended support for the aged operating system. A hungry vulture looking for some luncheon snapped this Tesco PoS terminal which seemed to have crashed and rebooted, going via …

  1. The Alphabet

    "Unexpected operating system in baggage area, please remove and try again"

    1. GrahamRJ

      Morrisons have a different message. Theirs says (at some volume): "Surprising item in bagging area."

      I don't know why it's surprising. OK, this particular item was a cucumber, which could cause surprise in various NSFW ways. But the staff member didn't seem at all surprised at the checkout going on the fritz, and nor was I.

      1. Halfmad

        DO YOU HAVE A MORE CARD?!?!

        No, now please stop shouting at me Morrisons POS.

      2. silks

        Morrisons self-checkouts do seem to be set at FULL VOLUME at my local store, can hear them aisles away!

        1. phuzz Silver badge

          The first thing I do when using a self service checkout is to mute it.

          Oh, and going with the heaviest item first seem to help stop the scales from fucking up as much.

  2. AMBxx Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Local Optician

    The big machines that measure the pressure in your eyes (Henson) used to use BBC Micro to do the work. I know there were still some around 15 years ago. I'm sure there are still some doing a good job now. Can tell from the distinctive two tone startup tone.

    That said, they're not Internet connected, so perfectly safe.

    1. MonkeyBob
      Joke

      Re: Local Optician

      That said, they're not Internet connected, so perfectly safe.

      Yes but did they lock down the USB ports?

      icon -------------->

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Local Optician

        > Yes but did they lock down the USB ports?

        At some major EU airports, the PC's used by security staff to the X-Ray (etc) machines have their cables and unblocked USB ports facing users, directly on the edge of the desks right where they're accessible to people just casually leaning on the desks.

        For anyone so inclined (not me) they'd be truly trivial to stick something in.

        Not sure how that gets past any security audits.

        1. bluesxman
          Go

          Re: Local Optician

          Various endpoint protection programs can lock down the USB ports -- there's a (slim) chance they're using something like that. Though that probably wouldn't save them from USB Kill or similar. But I suspect that deploying that would quite likely cause you to be delayed from reaching your flight, or anywhere else for that matter.

        2. BoomHauer

          Re: Local Optician

          Could be BIOS blocked, or simpler, they just pulled the internal cable. Then again, I'm probably giving them way to much credit.

          1. VinceH

            Re: Local Optician

            Er... MonkeyBob was joking about the USB ports because a (normal) BBC Micro doesn't have such modern niceties.

            I say normal, because people do tinker - for example, this is from 2012:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTOVBADSPMs

            1. vistisen

              Re: Local Optician

              Even older tech can be connected to the internet: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/21/azure_sphere_goes_retro_in_its_43_year_old_altair_basic_boots/

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Local Optician

          For anyone so inclined (not me) they'd be truly trivial to stick something in.

          Well, I don't care how you get your jollies, but I feel truly sorry for you if it will readily fit in a USB port...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Local Optician

            > Well, I don't care how you get your jollies, but I feel truly sorry for you if it will readily fit in a USB port...

            Definitely not readily, but with enough force most anything can be made to fit anywhere.

            (Ouch!)

            Wonder if that would count as "self-tasering"?

        4. silks

          Re: Local Optician

          Software blocks?

      2. Nexus1974

        Re: Local Optician

        That can easily be done via Group Policy or an application control piece of software.

        I sometime wonder if the writers at The Register have worked on large scale IT, running XP is not really that bad especially if the machines are not connected to the Internet.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Local Optician

          > That can easily be done via Group Policy or an application control piece of software.

          Strongly suspect any decent grade USB malware would get around the more common USB blocking approaches.

          Sure, someone plugging in (say) some random storage device or wifi stick will likely not have it work.

          But anyone clueful doing it "on purpose" and with evil intent is probably not going to be stopped by the kiddie barriers.

        2. ElNumbre
          Trollface

          Re: Local Optician

          No, they're journalists, not IT propeller heads. You can tell by their ability to write something resembling English in paragraphs numbering greater than one.

        3. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: Local Optician

          "running XP is not really that bad especially if the machines are not connected to the Internet"

          For point of sale equipment, it is almost certainly connected, if not to the internet at large, at least a corporate network. You could create a communication system that lets information about payments be sent out without networking, but that is difficult and probably wouldn't be attempted. These vulnerable devices have been used before to gain access to payment information, usually after a breach somewhere else in the network.

        4. Steve Graham

          Re: Local Optician

          "running XP is not really that bad especially if the machines are not connected to the Internet"

          They probably use floppy disks to collect the transactions. Didn't all XP computers come with a disk drive?

    2. defiler

      Re: Local Optician

      But are they Econet-connected? :-/

      No Clock

    3. Baldrickk

      Re: BBC Micro

      We have one of these in the workshop at my company. Its doing the same job as it always did, running tests on new/refurbished hardware.

      It'll only get replaced if the company we are doing the work for stumps up the cash to replace it, the problem being that if it were to break, we're out of replacement hardware for it...

  3. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Uhm, but the versions of POSReady2009 I've played around with does not have CHKDSK installed... so what gives here?

    It's a real PITA, especially when it reboots and the file system's dirty, and there's no CHKDSK installed.

    Maybe I'm missing something here somewhere...

    1. DJ Smiley

      Maybe you missed the bit where it was hopeful that the failure that is Tesco's would insist of something better than the cheapest of cheap work when building the PoS?

    2. tony72

      I don't know about POSReady 2009, but with the earlier versions of XP Embedded that I was familiar with, pretty much every component of regular XP was available as an option, it just depends what the person that builds the image chooses to include.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        >I don't know about POSReady 2009, but with the earlier versions of XP Embedded that I was familiar with, pretty much every component of regular XP was available as an option

        .....indeed and you can actually go the other way and keep the EOL'ed XP editions fresh using the POSReady 2009 updates and a couple of registry hacks. Latest updates were rolled out 10 days ago BTW so why this is a story I'm not sure.

        1. Mage Silver badge

          XP registry

          I did this out of curiosity on an XP desktop used a couple of times a year in the workshop. It's pretty easy (unlike Win10) to review the suggested updates and hide the ones only needed for a POS and inappropriate for a workstation.

          I have a 2 way belkin box someone chucked out. The other PC on the box, sharing screen, keyboard and mouse is running Linux Mint + Mate. The WINE on it runs some old VB6 and other programs needed in the workshop for test gear that won't run even on 64 bit Win7, though they do work on 32 bit win 7.

          Likely the Office XP / aka Word 2002 might be a risk?

          Fine if not used on the Internet or with files of unknown provenance (data or programs).

  4. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Eh?

    Built on the XP codebase, these embedded operating systems hit end-of-life in January and April 2019 respectively, as Microsoft explained four years ago.

    Either there is some time travel involved or there is a date wrong. I was under the impression that we were not yet in 2019 and especially April as BREXIT would have happened and someone would have told me. (sic)

    1. Kubla Cant

      Re: Eh?

      Makes sense if you assume "will" is implied before "hit end-of-life".

    2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

      Re: Eh?

      That's present continuous, 'they hit', rather than past simple, 'they hit'.

      Pesky irregular verbs, eh?

    3. John H Woods Silver badge

      Re: Eh?

      I go back to work next week.

  5. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Joke

    Tesco PoS terminal

    correct on both counts ....

  6. Alister

    Next time you see a self-service checkout throw a wobbly and revert to XP, don't panic straightaway.

    Thank you for that sage advice.

    Because of course without it, I would have run screaming from the store crying "OH MY GOD , WE'RE ALL DOOMED!".

    NOT!

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. Peter Mount

    Some taxis still run XP

    Ok it was about 4 years ago but was in a London Black Cab & the display's inside were in the middle of rebooting XP Embedded edition

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: Some taxis still run XP

      Well, 4 years ago, Windows XP was legal!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Some taxis still run XP

        > Well, 4 years ago, Windows XP was legal!

        "Legal"?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Some taxis still run XP

        Well, 4 years ago, Windows XP was legal!

        I don't know what the rules are where you come from but XP is 18 tomorrow. In civilised countries, people say that someone is "legal" when they reach 16 or 18. Four years ago, it was approaching 14. You can get locked up for that!

        1. WolfFan Silver badge
          Gimp

          Re: Some taxis still run XP

          it was approaching 14. You can get locked up for that!

          Not in Tennessee. Or Kentucky. Or Alabama. Or Norfolk. Not a problem in Scotland, Wales, or Australia as sheep don't usually get that old.

  9. Glen 1

    Azure Glow

    I see what you did there :3

  10. Bodestone

    I've seen that a few times at the wee Tesco I pop into now and then.

    Apparently trying to use certain flavours of US credit card forces a reboot.

    1. vistisen

      After brexit I wonder if my Danish Visa card will også cause them to BSOD. In fact the whole country will probably BREXSOD

  11. Zippy´s Sausage Factory

    Next time I see one of the tills rebooting at our local supermarket I'll snap you a pic.

    Last time I saw it happen, they were Windows 2000 Pro.

    (And no, it's not a Tesco. Or indeed any supermarket that has any branches in the UK, as far as I know)

  12. My other car WAS an IAV Stryker

    Last time I saw XP in the wild (i.e. not reported by El Reg), it was also a self-checkout at US hypermarket chain Meijer. I know the local Ace Hardware locations also use a Windows-based POS, but I don't know which Winver.

    I don't understand why NCR and the lot their peers bother to use anything so bloated when an R-pi properly configured could do the job. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.)

    1. Alister

      I don't understand why NCR and the lot their peers bother to use anything so bloated when an R-pi properly configured could do the job. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.)

      I suspect it's a matter of availability of drivers for the hardware, there may not be Linux equivalents to run the various peripherals.

      Certainly when our company had a brief dalliance with ticketing kiosks, some years ago, the only available software was Windows based, and relied on a proprietary interface card to join all the bits up - no USB equivalents.

      1. Jon 37

        Also programmer availability. Windows desktop GUI programmers are easier to find than Linux desktop GUI programmers. Any Visual Basic programmer can do a Windows GUI.

        Also on a typical big-company Windows-based corporate LAN, developing for Windows is easier than developing for Linux because everyone has Windows PCs.

        1. DuncanLarge Silver badge

          Cross platform development is EASY

          It shouldn't be hard at all for find a developer who can make a GUI that runs on multiple platforms.

          Java does it, .Net/Mono does it. There are no real differences, a button is an instance of the button class regardless of the underlying OS or graphical subsystem. This is precisely the main drive behind these languages. Sure there may be a difference in IDE but anyone who has used an IDE long enough will be able to adapt and anyone who hasnt will just see it as part of the same learning curve as before, assuming they do the development on the LInux system itself! They could just keep using their proffered IDE and simply test on a Linux system.

          My god you could even use the most universal of cross platform of interfaces, HTML!

          I have developed stuff for android. The IDE runs in Java, on any OS that runs Java. The VM that I test on runs on any platform that runs a supported Java, heck I usually just forgo the VM and push the app to my personal phone, using USB! With full debugging, live over USB. In Linux, just by plugging it in. I dont do it in windows because I cba to hunt down the driver I need.

          Also, if anyone is using Visual Basic nowadays to do anything other than making a GUI for prototyping I'd be very worried.

          And windows PC's can run virtual machines nowadays. Download a development environment turn-key VM, run it in a hypervisor. Develop on windows, compile, move to the Linux VM, run.

          I've been doing this since the early 2000's there really is no excuse any more.

          Once all the kiddies with their Linux running raspberry Pis grow up and expect to program on Linux because "everyone had a linux RPi" we will see the opposite argument I bet: "Nobody will develop a GUI for windows because everyone runs Linux and ts hard to find developers who can write a GUI for windows".

          Everyone running Linux would be great of course. But that argument would still be stupid just as it is now. Cross platform development is EASY. The hard stuff was done by other very clever people a long time ago.

          Hey, did you know? Minecraft runs on Linux, and windows. One executable. What is this sorcery?

          1. Alister

            Re: Cross platform development is EASY

            It shouldn't be hard at all for find a developer who can make a GUI that runs on multiple platforms.

            No, maybe not.

            Now find a developer who will write the kernel drivers for the proprietary hardware that runs on multiple platforms...

          2. Deltics

            Re: Cross platform development is EASY

            Yep a cross-platform UI for kiosks would be straight-forward. Otherwise... not-so-much.

            Kiosks are much simpler for such things because the UX is constrained by the very specific nature of the device. But the vast majority of software in the world does not run on kiosks. It runs on various different devices and form factors and operating environments, many of which specifically differentiate themselves from others by differences in the UX.

            If cross-platform development was EASY, everyone would be doing it by now and it wouldn't need to be constantly re-invented to get-it-right-this-time-no-honestly-we-have-nailed-it-now. I am guessing you don't remember (perhaps weren't even born at) the time of the likes of Omnis and various other 4GL's that had "nailed" cross-platform development in the 90's - a time when there was far less diversity in platforms to contend with.

            Which is of course why Omnis and it's ilk went on to dominate the software development industry and why we are all using those tools now.

            Oh, but wait. Then came Java with it's Ultimate Solution to the write-once-run-anywhere problem. Hmmmmm.

            Then .NET. Then Qt. Then FireMonkey. Then Xamarin. Then .net Core (Jeez even .NET is taking two bites at the cherry).

            It's almost as if this is a bit harder than some people seem to think.

        2. Adrian 4

          No, I think it's an honest mistake. They went shopping for a POS operating system and obviously Windows was the first thing that came to mind. That's the trouble with acronyms - they tend to result in hash collisions.

      2. jelabarre59

        I don't understand why NCR and the lot their peers bother to use anything so bloated when an R-pi properly configured could do the job. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.)

        I't probably because whomever originally specced out the system design was only familiar with Point-and-Drool MSWin dev environments.

        Now if these companies had been anything less than abject cowards, they could have funnelled a bunch of money and effort into ReactOS development in 2009 or earlier (when they'd realize they were setting themselves for the situation), it might have been ready by 2014. They'd have full source code, wouldn't be dependent on questionable updates, and could save boatloads of money on licenses. But as I say, it would require companies not suffering from Cranial-Rectal Insertion.

  13. Jay Lenovo

    Look boss, de plane! de plane!

    XP's demise?, Nah still just a fantasy. Those islands of application will stubbornly continue to exist.

    Behind the scenes, business will keep XP based solutions alive until the bean counters succumb to nausea.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The touch screen counter machines in your local friendly Post Office run NT4 on Pentium 4s with 256Mb of memory...

    1. Velv
      Flame

      That’ll be the Pentiums that had the floating point error, which would explain why there’s such a controversy over Horizons accounting errors.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Ahh, Horizon, the stuff of nightmares.

        I had a lot of integration work related to Horizon, and what an absolute pain it was to work with.

        Designed originally to use a custom flat-file format, with variable length records, at a time when everyone else was using delimited files (CSV, EDIFACT, X12 etc.), and many systems were moving to XML.

        Later enhanced, not by changing to a better format, but by actually appending XML onto the end of the flat-file records! And worse still, it wasn't even valid XML (no root element for example), and the Horizon system couldn't even guarantee the order in which the elements would arrive.

        We had to write a custom preprocessor, to reformat the XML into something valid (i.e. that could be parsed with a schema), so that we could then use standard XML processing tools, to process the actual data.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Alas most of the old NT machines have gone now as Post Office have been running a major project to replace these old bits of kit with a combination of Thinkstations and all-in-one units running Win10.

      Not a bad idea considering the old hardware was so aged that some of them wouldn't even survive a power cycle without the hard drive croaking and the screen backlights had got so dim you could barely see the screens in a well lit room.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    its tesco, are you surprised?

    apparantly they run common garden XP pro and yes they are networked, how the F do you think the NFC and visa card payment works, pixie dust and sneakernet?

    Or how else do ALL the tills recieve any price changes to the stores portfolio on a daily basis? RS232 and a clown with a laptop? pfft no.

    Allegedy they were replacing all with new EPOS from NCR then they had to divert the millions to the gaping hole in their pension pot. ;o) I personally wouldnt give Tesco steam off my techy excrement, "loyalty" card anyone?

    Oh and others ive spotted, Home bargains until recently used W95 based POS ;) beat that! :P

    1. John Hawkins

      Re: its tesco, are you surprised?

      Hmm, would be interesting to know how they got that past the PCIDSS auditors. A few years ago you could wave a bit of paper at them with a list of possible mitigations on it, but in recent projects I've been involved in the correct answer to the auditors saying 'jump' has been 'how high?'.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fun Fact

    I was in Tesco the other day no less and was told contactless/cards aren't working because the wifi is down. Quite believable as they had a short power cut as I was walking round the store.

  17. razorfishsl

    For christ sake GET OVER IT...., there are ATM machines running in Hong Kong that still use XP

  18. Jacob's Elevator

    Stay Calm and Carry-on Browsing.

    So ..?

    I still use XP on 6 of my home's 9 PC's. Ah, you think, now you know who I am: I'm the guy you met on Archer's seat Edinburgh Tuesday putting the world to right on top of one of Scotland's 400M year-old volcano stumps. It's me alright. I divert, I wander, I meander ...

    XP is OK, Dirt cheap on eBay. Still activates, and runs. The scare stories are for those running businesses whose data could theoretically be hacked due to the rather convoluted hack weaknesses of this legacy OS.

    And Microsoft Essentials Security/Antivirus scanner still runs with weekly updates, though one has to do a manual (from website) download of the latest pattern-file(s).

    Don't worry about it. Nobody Manic Captain Painwaring. It's going to be OK .. for me.

    And if you listen to my lifetime of experience and advice ... it maybe will be OK for you too.

    What else is there to know?

    This is the way.

    This is the Dao.

    Pass on The Dharma, barmy army.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Stay Calm and Carry-on Browsing.

      > Archer's seat Edinburgh

      Is that the one near Princess Street and the Royal Lime, and from where one can see Carlton Hill (with- of course- Jacob's Elevator going up the side)?

  19. glnz

    I've been updating my XP Desktop the last 4+ years with the POSReady 2009 updates, per a great and very long thread on MSFN.

    Which is why my XP box rings like a cash register and the DVD drawer opens to give change.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Same here

    Alas my XP box has the BIOS problem so many things won't run due to no SSE3.

  21. This post has been deleted by its author

  22. 89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921

    I run XP on one of my music making PCs - loads of vintage 90s era software synths won't work on anything new. You can't beat obscure synths for unique noises. One of my other music PCs runs Windows 2000 because of the driver limitation of the very useful sound card which creates amazingly strange and expansive hardware DSP echo, much weirder than anything "new"; which is often just the same algorithm recoded for a new platform, then price hiked. I still think XP is the most user friendly OS Microsoft have ever made, very few clicks to get to settings and programs compared to anything that they've shat out forcibly since. NEVER 10!

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So what, not like modern OS are completely bug free

    Is this really an issue. There connected to an internal network to provide functionality for another device, e.g the checkout.

    I recently worked in a large company that make silicon wafers and they have machines in the fab that runs OS2/2, NT4 and Next. You cant just change production systems because Microsoft no longer supports it, it would cost the economy millions, if not billions. to upgrade manufacturing kit across the world. The OS is not the difficult part, it is the hardware support and applications that run on top of it.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fair enough

    I found an old jukebox that runs 98SE with some strange custom config.

    Of course, most sound cards made recently don't support it, in fact I resorted to trawling Ebay, Craigslist and "Friends in low places" to find one only to experience the horror of a custom setup that noticed I'd changed the CMOS battery and ate itself!!!!

    Note, if you ever have the misfortune to run into one of these for $DEITYS SAKE image the drive.#

    The software is so specific that it won't run if anything is changed at all even drive serial.

    I had to use extreme measures to get a second keyboard working.

    (note: still have it because its cool)

  25. Mike 137 Silver badge

    Oh the joys of 'updates'

    "... April 2016 when Redmond finally stopped issuing patches for XP Embedded SP3 ..."

    which really means no more than that fourteen years down the line they finally gave up trying to get it right.

  26. Lee D Silver badge

    I wouldn't care if they ran OS/2 or DOS.

    But could we please just make them so that they aren't so damned tied to that stupid weighing scale thing on the bagging area.

    Honestly, just turn it off. If I wanted to steal something, I just wouldn't put it through the till in the first place, and my receipt would always clearly show what I SHOULD have in my possession and what I shouldn't. And likely you'd want to steal things like microSD cards or something expensive-but-light that wouldn't even register, or you'd scan something and then put something weighing the same on the scale anyway. Nobody ever checks, even if you call someone over.

    Stick a camera directly in the machine to watch what I scan/place on there, and then turn off the stupid scale thing that whines at me until I manage to arrange the bags in the exact configuration that it needs to sense "previous weight + 0.5g of envelope" or whatever.

    Honestly, it's a brilliant technology, totally hampered by a stupid implementation. And, yes, I have seen stores where they turn it off... Poundland sometimes has them. It works so much better without that nonsense.

    Fix that and you could run the thing on hand-coded assembler for all I care.

    1. Boothy

      My main complaint about the weighing scale in the bagging area is the poor implementation for when you are using your own bag (which for me, is almost always).

      Prompt: Are you using your own bag?

      Me: Yes.

      Prompt: Please place your bag in the bagging area and press OK to continue.

      Me: Places bag, clicks ok.

      Prompt: Unexpected item in bagging area, please remove item and try again.

      Me: Gives up, drops bag on floor, then loads the bag once I've finished scanning and paying for everything! This of course takes longer, and so ties the till up for more time!

      I suspect the issue is around weight, they expect you to put a carrier bag, like one of the bag-for-life ones, onto the till, when I always use a backpack if I'm on foot, which of course weights more.

      1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge
        Devil

        Suggestion for backpackers

        Carry a single use bag, life bag, or cotton bag; put that on scales to pack shopping into, then transfer the entire bag into your backpack. I caught cotton bags with Harry Potter logos at Poundland that fit in my new Ridge bicycle panniers. To avoid nerd conversations I chose Slytherin House bags. Working so far!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Suggestion for backpackers

          Except that unfortunately a loaded shopping bag is often too large to fit easily through the neck of a rucksack…

          They should just let us plonk the rucksack on the scales and be done with it. Weigh rucksack, store the weight, then check the weight of purchases by comparing the increase in the weight on the scales: it shouldn’t be hard.

  27. Haku

    Bag for life.

    We're being encouraged to re-use bags, but too often those damn self-service checkouts freak out when you put your bag for life in the bagging area and it cries out for human assistance.

    Whilst annoying I guess the positive spin on it is it's an indication the machines aren't mature enough to take over, yet...

    1. Boothy

      Re: Bag for life.

      See my post above. I get this all the time, and usually just put the bag on the floor instead (as half the time trying to get assistance is a pain, as there is either no one around, they are trying to resolve some other issue, or too busy chatting to some other member of staff to bother assiting).

      1. TheTor

        Re: Bag for life.

        At Tesco (not sure about the others), if you press the "Request subtotal" button, you can take whatever you put on the scales off without it complaining. Fill one bag, press the button, take bag off scale, and continue with the second bag.

        Worked that one out when I had a bunch of stuff that wouldn't all fit on at the same time.

        1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

          Re: Bag for life.

          Upvote for the "subtotal" tip for Tesco, provided that it works. Maybe I can use it at the Co-op just east from Central Station in Glasgow, where the self-service stations are clever but cramped.

          Several shops seem to give me an issue of accepting a bar code but not letting me bag the item. I might get into trouble for dealing with that by laying the charged but unweighed item next to the scanner and then taking it with me after I pay for it and for everything else - but I don't see it as doing wrong. I must look honest, anyway.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Bag for life.

            I also get a lot of complaints when I go shopping with my bag for life, or "the wife" as she likes to be called.

  28. steviebuk Silver badge

    Sainsburys REALLY....

    ...needs to fing sort out theirs. They are the shittest machines. Put the bag on the hook thing to keep it open. Start putting stuff in. It can't detect that you've put the stuff in so moans. OK. I'll shift it around then. Maybe an issue with your scales. Nope, 1 item later it starts doing it again.

    Bollocks I say.

    The most reliable one I've come across so far is Waitrose and then M&S in that order.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sainsburys REALLY....

      The new software they have put on the self service tills is awful. So slow and unresponsive.

      Also, in some branches the smartshop button is enabled (where they have the handheld scanners) on the self service tills, yet it does not work. It gets stuck in a 'please rescan' loop, good testing there (!!!).

      The best ones are the Waitrose ones with no bagging area.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sainsburys REALLY....

      And some of the self service tills have you put your basket on one side and then scan and pack to the other side, but then some of them have the basket and packing shelves above each other on the same side but with no obvious indication as to whether the shelves on the left or on the right side are the ones which belong to “your” till, grrrr!!

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NCR

    When I dealt with them several years ago, their attitude was that they didn't give a s**t.

    "Patching? That's your problem."

    "Security? That's your problem."

    In the industry I was in, they supplied the kiosk, the OS, and the platform, and managed app deployment on the kiosk platform. But they then insisted that the OS wasn't their responsibility...

  30. adam payne

    XP embedded is still everywhere. I've seen it in big high street shops and in small independent shops.

    Big or small they won't spend money unless they really have no other choice.

  31. EnviableOne

    all the NCR tills in my area appear to have just had a GUI update, but i doubt the OS has changed.

    they now look all wordpress site like

  32. Phil George

    Local Co-op

    The local co-op convenience store to my work still run XP Pro as their till system.

  33. G7mzh

    Not long ago I happened upon a faulty cash dispenser that was in the throes of rebooting. It was running OS/2.

    And a surprising number of shops still use DOS for stock control and ordering. Most Chinese take-aways do, as does a well-known chain of bookshops.

  34. spold Silver badge

    Sorted...

    Just press Carrot Malt Dill-eat and put your arse on the scanner....

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    take a bag for life to tesco with you?

    I would but everytime I do she costs me a fortune with shit we dont need!

    Badoom tisch!

  36. Bodincus

    XP? Pfffftt.... Amateurs

    Last time I worked on night shift at Tesco, admittedly a few years ago, the PCs used to print the pricing labels for the shelves were running Win98.

    Every store has at least one kiosk with a printer below. Look for it.

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