The barcode scanners are used almost anywhere, from the local supermarket to the largest manufacturing plants.
They have helped many businesses to streamline their stocktaking and apart from keeping track on all the sold or shipped items, have found some unorthodox uses as well such as tracking the movement of certain species.
They could easily help even the small and family run business run smoothly and come in a wide range, which offers models suitable for the different entities.
The technology behind the barcode scanners, also known as readers, is based on a number of symbols, called bars.
The barcode labels typically consist of a number of vertical bars, which have different thickness and spacing; the readers read the information from the barcodes, send it to a computer, where it is translated into an information that humans can understand.
Today, barcode labels use various different symbologies, which lead to the development of different readers as well.
The barcode scanners are divided into a number of categories, depending on their methods of connection, housing types, and reading technology.
While corded and wireless are two major groups, each with its own advantages, the most notable division is between the types that use different types of technologies.
The two main groups there are the laser-based and the CCD scanners, with the latter surpassing the former's popularity only a few short years ago.
The laser readers, once considered the best performers are more expensive and have movable parts, which makes them less durable; the CCD readers, on the other hand, do not use laser beam, but rather hundreds of light sources, which makes them more affordable.
However, the laser-based ones come with their own advantages and could be more accurate in certain situations, can read barcodes from a greater distance, and have no trouble reading wider labels as well.