Biometrics for the masses

I was doing some research on fingerprint scanning technology and initially started with Sony puppy fingerprint line and finally ended up with Microsoft Fingerprint Reader which costs around $30! That makes the technology accessible for personal use. I am planning to buy this and play around using Griaule SDK which has free trial version.

On a side note, except Griaule, no one else seem to offer a free trial version. Interestingly, Griaule is actually a pure software player. Most of the hardware vendors, who also provide SDKs are charging obscenely high amounts. I wonder how they can sell their hardware unless there are good software applications and good software applications will only be possible if there are free trial versions or better yet, free developer versions.