Laundry rooms going online

College students sitting in their dorm rooms will soon get an answer via the Internet to one of life's great unanswered questions: Is there a washer or dryer available in the basement laundry room?\nIBM and a smaller company named USA Technologies today unfolds "eSuds," a program that will connect 9,000 washers and dryers in college dorms around the country to the Net starting early next year.\nFrom a Web page, students will see which washers and dryers are in use and which are free. When their clothes are clean or dry, the appliance will send an e-mail message -- or even beep a pager.\nThis may sound silly, but there are serious business reasons for laundry-room operators to pay for online connections.\nNet-enabled washers and dryers will report breakdowns immediately, so operators can dispatch a repair person and get broken units quickly back into revenue-producing service.\nEternally cash-strapped students could also wash their clothes more often, again producing more revenue for equipment operators, because Internet-enabled machines can deduct the cost from an online account funded by Mom and Dad -- a much easier alternative than begging roommates for spare quarters.\nStudents pay by swiping their college ID card through a slot, or by entering an authorization code on their cellular phones.\nAnother convenience feature: eSuds washers will be attached to tanks full of detergent and fabric softener, which can be dispensed on demand for a small additional fee.\neSuds was tested earlier this year at Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, drawing an "overwhelmingly positive response" from students, said Wendy Jenkins, head of marketing for USA Technologies, based in the Philadelphia suburb of Wayne, Penn.\nIBM's Global Services group and USA Technologies jointly developed the technology for cashless laundry machines and the software for monitoring the machines through the Web.\nThe partners are selling eSuds to service operators who run college laundry rooms under contract and will begin at schools in the Midwest, quickly spreading nationwide.\nIt's part of a bigger trend toward cashless vending machines, motivated in part by efforts to reduce vandalism.