A couple of months ago when I blogged about Microsoft's touch-sensitive computer-table hybrid, I mentioned that it's going to show up in Starwood's hotel properties and that the existing kiosks I've seen in Starwood hotels, such as Sheratons, often don't work.
Well, I made the trek from San Francisco to New York yesterday (I'm here for the annual conference of the American Society of Business Publication Editors), and when I arrived at the Sheraton New York, one of the check-in kiosks had an "out of order" sign . But the other looked to be working...
...until I tapped the screen to begin, whereupon it displayed one of the most grandiose error messages I've ever seen--real This is Broken stuff...
(Yes, I decided to document all this--lucky I had my camera with me.)
So I ended up talking to a friendly real human being at the front desk, who had me checked in in about four minutes. Real people may be expensive to hire, train, and employ, but at their best, they're awfully good at what they do.
And I remain skeptical about even a public-place computer as potentially cool as Microsoft's Surface actually working reliably in actual public places...
Lol