Patent ID: 7171378

Claim:
A personal shopping system for use in a shopping establishment and a home, comprising: a host computer associated with the shopping establishment; a wireless access point coupled to the host computer; a mobile device provided by the shopping establishment to the customer having a two-way data interface to facilitate reading bar codes associated with products and exchanging data associated with the bar codes with a home computer and the shopping establishment's host computer; an input key for generating an alert message; a wireless transceiver for communicating the alert message to the wireless access point; a position sensing module for sensing the location of the mobile device; a data transfer circuit associated with the home computer for transmitting the bar code data information to the shopping establishment's host computer; a shopping establishment kiosk cradle coupled to the shopping establishment's host computer having a kiosk data interface for interfacing with the two-way data interface of the mobile device, wherein the bar code data is transmitted from the mobile device; and a mobile device cradle coupled to the home computer having a data interface for interfacing with the two-way data interface of the mobile device, wherein the bar code data is transmitted from the mobile device.