Originally Posted by MsEithne
To me (and a few other crabby old people), a smartphone IS special equipment!
And smartphones have that pesky telephone feature. I have one telephone and that's bad enough. Imagining carrying one with me everywhere makes me shudder. LOL.
Well, I believe you are a rare breed. Smart phones are becoming more and more common, and I'd wager that within a year or two, that's ALL that cell phone companies will be selling. And if you don't have one, that's fine - there are plenty of other people around that can read the QR code on my quilt. Smart phones are not "uni-taskers", either, meaning they can multi-task, unlike RFID readers. So I can buy a smart phone which will make phone calls, receive texts, emails and alerts, keep my calender and remind me of appointments, let me surf the web and play games while I wait at at the doctor or dentist, AND I can read QR codes - instead of paying the $100 to $500 for something that can only read RFID signals, and that's IT.
Also - how do you address the fact that a police officer or non-quilter who might find the quilt would probably not even think about taking that quilt someplace to see if it had a microchip? They would simply see it as a blanket, and wouldn't consider the fact that someone might value it enough to microchip it.