The humble fax machine. Long live the fax machine… An old technology coming back?

This came from having one of those random, geeky office conversations you tend to have for no particular reason. You know the sort… What would happen if you swap the ‘n’ and ‘m’ key round on the new person’s keyboard. Do you remember Dungeon Master on the Atari ST? What would life be like if it were more like a video game? Would the internet of come about quicker if macs were the dominant computer? More to the point, would the world be a better place if macs ruled the PC market?

I digress. This blog is aimed at the humble fax. Our friend. Our enemy. The source of endless cheap printer cartridge refills - which incidentally you need as all the cartridge offers use up the ink! The butt of many jokes (think that classic scene if Office Space).

But a lot’s happened in the world. We now have that amazing thing called the internet. You can send anything - well, anything that can be converted to 0 and 1 - to anyone, anywhere. Add to that, the way that most photocopiers are now attached to the office network, so now you don’t even need your computer to send that file. Just stick the paper in the copier, enter the email address, and hey-presto, the other person gets it - and in probably less time than the fax.

So, with all this technology, why is the fax still going strong? Well everyone, I’ve great news for you! I think I’ve cracked it!

I’ll start with the problem with emails. In the original days of email, it was a special event when you got one. Nowadays, you get so many emails, that, to be honest, you don’t read all of them, often missing vital things. It’s not malicious, but to get your job done, you often have to skim read the title and ignore some of them. About now, some people are saying no I don’t do that. But think about it… Really think about it. I bet you do!

Now, with faxes, you see a lone piece of paper on the fax machine, someone will inevitably pick it up and read it. Even if they don’t finish it, they’ll still pick it up and read it to point. You have to! Faxes don’t have titles do they, so you’ve got to find out what’s on there somehow.

You also have the advantage now that they’ve passed of the spammers radar, so the faxes you generally get are actually useful. Think about that for a second. The one tool we used to curse for the amount of rubbish you got on it is suddenly really, really useful again!

Now, put the fax machine next to the secretary in the office, and suddenly anything really important has an almost guaranteed way to get to you. That’s why we use it for sign-off documents. That’s why anything you have to sign has to use the fax. It is useful and is a prime example of how you shouldn’t dismiss technologies too soon. Email’s still a child in a grown-ups world.