Fax machines

[mina2 6]

I just hate them I really do.

 

I just wanted to say that, I think in this day and age they are WORTHLESS.

 

(One of my clients insists on communicating and sending info by fax rather than email, causing endless problems)

[kintaro 0]

May I venture to guess your client is Japanese? I have several clients that insist on faxing rather than emailing things. My only guess is they learned the fax technology back in the day and aren't up to speed with easier methods yet.

 

I feel your pain mina2!

[mfurmane 0]

i too work with clients with the same outdated demands.....their rationale is security....they don't trust the interweb yet.

[Ocean11 0]

I'm in full agreement with that!

 

In fact, I hesitate to admit to potential senders that I own one of the things. This is after once receiving a 20 page faxed job that I won't accept anyway from Holland at 3 am, sent by an automatic redialling fax.

 

Cover sheet anyone?

 

The email equivalent of the fax for uselessness is the scanned pdf.

[mina2 6]

So I'm not alone!!

 

It's just so annoying because faxes either break down, don't get sent, are hard to read - and above all you don't have an electronic copy to edit.use etc so it just adds so much time.

[mfurmane 0]

>The email equivalent of the fax for uselessness is the scanned pdf.

 

Wow...I disagree, can you believe it? I find the scanned pdf very useful to transmit marked-up drawings and stuff. This way the recipient can view them without leaving their desk and can choose to print or not to print.

Unfortunately, my current office lacks one of these and the facsimile clogs the entire process.

[NoFakie 45]

Raise your prices and then offer a discount to your normal price for electronic text. Tell people how to use PGP if there are security concerns.

 

If you see a fax or hard copy again, at least you'll get a handling fee.

[mina2 6]

Raising prices sure is a good idea, though not always easy in the situation I'm in (esp with current clients).

[Ocean11 0]

I prefer to make it plain to people who rely on faxes that they won't get their jobs done if they use inefficient technologies. Somehow they generally manage to get the data to me, even if they have to spend a day typing it up, or bugging somebody else for the original data. I don't want to look at fuzzy kanji at any price!

[BagOfCrisps 24]

Hey I thought you were planning on being nekkid this afternoon, mate! Or are you one of those peverse naked typists!!

[I'm Sexy 0]

I hate them also, I never tell people I have one always just email. They breaking so often.

[grungy-gonads 54]

I find that if a fax is more than a couple of pages it is almost guaranteed to come up with some kind of error. They should be confiscated in this here 21st century those things. Telling people you don't have one is indeed a very good idea.

[me jane 0]

Just the other day my J-boss said to me, "Faxes are more secure because they have real signatures on them". Then he went on to say that fax machines were invented by the Japanese because telegrams couldn't cope with kanji.

Real signatures?! Telegrams?!

[Thunderpants 0]

Funny thing is that fax usage only peaked 2-3 years ago.

Fax is much more secure than email. I know all about mail encryption and electronic signatures, but it is not easy for everyone to use.

With todays technologies, everyone can recive fax on their pc, and for bigger solutions you can have microsoft exchange server route fax messages from anywhere to your outlook client. I used to set up solutions like that. one company got 1500 sub numbers on 50 ISDN lines, all connected to a fax server which then converted the faxes to TIF and sent them to MS Exchange server.

for people like Ocean11, we provided OCR software, to convert the fax to ASCII for a word processor to understand

Confused? - no problem, the users loved it, it was super solid and had NO client software, if you knew your outlook, you were in business!

 

My point is: Fax is outdated, no doubt! But many people are comfortable using it, be cool

[veronica 2]

How do you receive faxes on your pc?

[Thunderpants 0]

If you have windows XP, the software is build in, however the software is crap. there are plenty of freeware programs that can do that.

Check this little piece of software out

http://www.electrasoft.com/

You also need a modem, remember those noisy things you used for connecting to the internet?