Are Fax Machines Obsolete?

[Milhouse]

I still use a fax pretty frequently. It is my secret shame (not a secret now though).

 

[MrG]

I still receive faxes on occasion. We move a lot of documents back and forth, and not all departments have a system for uploading images. It seems to be pretty common in our purchasing division as well. I assume this is because a lot of vendors aren't yet electronic.

 

[Douglas]

We use the fax machine all the time. In fact, the I would guess the majority of our orders arrive by fax. Of course, they could just as easily be e-mailed, and sometimes are e-mailed in addition to fax, but that puppy hums all day long. I suppose it's somewhat arcane, but when your customers are still addicted to it, you are too.

 

[FidelCashflow]

We still use them pretty regularly. I think once EVERYONE starts scanning and PDF'ing documents we can do away with the fax machine... but until then it's the trusty standby that everyone can use

 

[Connemara]

My dad's companies seem to use eFax a lot, but he still receives faxes.

 

[tiecollector]

It's still useful for stuff that needs to be signed and the original sig is not needed. You could use a scanner, but there are more steps involved, I'd rather use a fax.

 

[acidboy]

I even have 2 fax machines at the office

 

[intent]

Originally Posted by odoreater

In the legal field they are still used fairly frequently.

Originally Posted by javyn

Yeah, I hate when lawyers correspond via e-mail. Leads to all kinds of bullshit.

My small firm routinely faxes out giant faxes with dozens (if not hundreds) of pages all the time, though I think there's a computer on the other end that stores the faxes instead of printing them out. Email would be a much speedier option, but until there's a standard for encryption and signatures that everyone would adopt, it's simply not feasible.

 

[JetBlast]

We use ours all the time. Of course this coming from an industry that still uses these as our main form of printing-

 

[kwilkinson]

The trucking industry would be 10x slower without faxes.

 

[XenoX101]

Still use fax frequently, the best part about fax is that you can almost guarantee that what goes in one and comes out the other in the correct formatting, it is also much easier to fax a document than it is to scan and email it, plus once you send someone a scanned copy they can manipulate it with ease and due to the high resolution they could probably print what would appear to be an original.

On another note, I still use a pencil and notebook to sort out my budget and write down finances, can't stand doing it electronically, you can never get the layout the way you want it and it doesn't have the same weight to it, for me it is easier to remember something I have written with my own hand in my handwriting.

 

[Dakota rube]

Originally Posted by XenoX101

Still use fax frequently, the best part about fax is that you can almost guarantee that what goes in one and comes out the other in the correct formatting, it is also much easier to fax a document than it is to scan and email it, plus once you send someone a scanned copy they can manipulate it with ease and due to the high resolution they could probably print what would appear to be an original.

Ever hear of pdfs?

And you don't think someone can scan your fax, **** with it, and print it out?

 

[XenoX101]

PDFs are great, but they aren't easily edittable and hog resources. I do use them for many things, but they're too much of a pain for quick jobs.

As far as scanning faxes goes, usually the quality of a fax is so bad nobody would mistake it for an original, sure you could lower the quality on your scan, but thats more mucking around.