Here in China it is incredibly common for waiters/waitresses to carry small UMPC-type devices for taking orders which then beam the order back to the kitchen. The better systems allow the cooks to update menu items that are unavailable, specials, wait-times for special orders, etc. There are a few different models out there but nearly every mid-range and up restaraunt uses them and has been doing so for years. The USA is always behind in mobile tech for some reason.....

I remember years ago at a big expo they were actually using the first UMPC's of any note the Toshiba Libretto 100CT, for ticket selling and processing at the gates. They had wireless PCMCIA cards and inrared barcode readers for the tickets. Cool. Makes me thing what have we done lately because that was 15 years ago!

Here in Germany most of the restaurants use small PPC devices for taking the orders. These are connected back to the kitchen with wireless (some BT, some WLan). To be honest this tech is quite old and hardly worth a mention anymore.

Clavain