Why the Fax Machine Refuses To Die

snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia waxes befuddled on the ongoing existence of the fax machine. 'Consider what a fax machine actually is: a little device with a sheet feeder, a terrible scanning element, and an ancient modem. Most faxes run at 14,400bps. That's just over 1KB per second — and people are still using faxes to send 52 poorly scanned pages of some contract to one another. Over analog phone lines. Sometimes while paying long-distance charges! The mind boggles,' Venezia writes. 'If something as appallingly stupid as the fax machine can live on, it makes you wonder how we make progress at all. Old habits die hard. It just goes to show you: Bad technology generally isn't the problem; it's the people who persist in using that technology rather than embracing far superior alternatives.'"

Comments

It's convenience and security.

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Sheet-fed scanners are ridiculously expensive, plus you have to save the file, attach it to an email, then, hopefully, the file isn't too large for the sender or recipient's mailserver. With the fax machine, one just drops the stack in, verify the fax successfully transmitted, task complete.

Also, many people feel that snooping of phone lines is much less likely to occur than snooping of email, when is sent in the clear.

Re:It's convenience and security.

[CalSolt]

The old fax machine in the corner where everyone's faxes go and anyone can look through them isn't terribly secure either.

Everyone who works in a medical office is required to be educated about and sign a HIPAA compliance form. Every employee is liable.

If someone is willing to go through enough trouble to intercept a company's email, they'll happily do the same for their fax line.

Phone lines are more difficult to break into than a protocol that is passed over the public internet. At least for now.

Re:It's convenience and security.

[tomhudson]

Consider that 25% of all homes don't have a land-line, so faxing stuff to or from them is out, even if their all-in-one has fax capabilities.

Faxes are dying. The government and the banks accept PDFs for lots of things nowadays, and creating and emailing a pdf is a lot easier.

By email:
1. Type up document
2. Paste image of your signature (previously scanned in) into document if it requires a signature
3. Select "email as PDF from the File menu"

(Note that you can also set a password on the document, send it in color, attach color photos with great resolution, as well as videos and sound - important things faxes can't do)

By fax:
1. Type up document
2. Print document
3. Sign document if it requires a signature
4. Fax document
5. File or recycle printed document
6. Wonder whatever happened to the cost savings of the "paperless office".

Re:It's convenience and security.

[Bacon Bits]

Most FAX machine inboxes nowadays go to email, in my experience. The vast majority of FAX systems today larger than a single office are paperless systems built into leased copiers or multi-function devices which do the raw data transfer and call handling but otherwise input from a printer on a computer OS (or the built-in scanner) and output to the local email server.

Quite honestly, the reason the FAX refuses to die is because people, once they adopt a method, tend not to change. It's the inertia of least effort, aka laziness, aka efficiency of thought. Granted, there are good reasons for this approach. Most people have bad experiences with moving to new systems. How many times have you spoken with someone who blames a new system for slowing productivity, missing features, or for making the effort of using those features far more complex? People therefore tend to distrust new technology, again because in their experience -- and this is correct -- new technology fails and established technology works. The reason for that truth is quite simple: only good technology sticks around to become established; bad technology is abandoned.

Why should someone abandon what works for what doesn't? Or, more accurately, abandon that which fails in a way I have already learned to handle in exchange for something which fails in a way I don't understand -- and maybe can't even tell if it has failed? If I'm going to invest extra effort in something which is not more reliable and does not

So, what does email offer that FAX does not? Is it more reliable? No, not really. Email has inherently unreliable delivery, particularly with spam and malware filters which silently delete suspect emails. Additionally, email is already a primary contact for business, so FAX availability actually offers some communication redundancy. Is email more secure? Absolutely not. Email is unencrypted during transmission unless the message itself is encrypted. Does email guarantee sender identity better than FAX? Quite the opposite. It's often illegal to obfuscate or alter your sending FAX number due to junk FAX laws, while spoofing email is trivial.

Finally, since FAX is established in the business world, it has become something you will often need not because you yourself haven't adopted a better technology, but because your business peers and customers haven't adopted a better technology. Even where it's not wanted, it's a mandatory legacy system to deal with people who MUST use FAX for whatever reason.

So, if everybody has it and email actually isn't better, why change?

Re:It's convenience and security.

[tumnasgt]

But how do you prove that the signature on a fax wasn't just a jpeg pasted in the document before sending?

Re:It's convenience and security.

[ajo_arctus]

Fax was stupid tech 15 - 20 years ago. Transmitting bits instead of data? Are you nuts?

I'm intrigued... What is the difference between bits and data? You do realize it's all the same, right? Fax machines are just as digital as a workstation, they just interface over an analogue telephone network.

I'd love to have the chance to show a doctor or lawyer what I could do for them with smart tech

Trouble is, even though those doctors and lawyers are the people who would need to purchase your new improved system, they don't actually care. Look at how they work -- they employ staff (temps in the legal profession, regular admin staff in medical) to do all of that for them. Those temps tend to come and go, so whatever solution you give them needs to involve minimal training -- fax machines are great, because everyone knows how they work. Whatever solution you come up with also has to work with zero training/cost for the recipient. Fax machines are great because it ticks this box too. It also needs to be relatively secure and reliable. Fax is reliable because if you get a send confirmation you can be pretty sure that they got it.

The simplest workable solution is usually the best, and fax machines currently fall in to that category. Email almost meets the criteria, but the extra steps and uncertainties make it less suited, so far as these people are concerned.

I know you're busy and it looks expensive, but you need to try harder for me to prove to you that it's not.

So speak to people in those professions and prepare a pitch. If you really can do stuff to improve their lives, they'll listen.

FWIW, I'm a software developer, and I've created software to do exactly what you are talking about -- I've built document management software and pitched it to legal people. I'm not a great sales person/networker (I'm working on it), so my evidence doesn't count for much, but I've found that people do not want to change a system that mostly works for them, despite the advantages. You need to show that you can save them serious time and money (but let's be honest, sending fax isn't time consuming), or bring them a whole new world of business that was previously unavailable (like e-commerce), but that doesn't apply here.

Re:It's convenience and security.

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

You are missing the real problem.

Why are we keeping documents in printed form at all?

When was the last time you created a document outside of a computer?

30 years ago:

- People typed up a document in their typewritter
- Used a copier machine to duplicate as necessary
- Faxed it

Now:

- People type up a document in their computer, then print it
- Use a copier machine to duplicate as necessary
- Fax it

When it should be:

- People type up a document in their computer, share digitally as required.

There is no need to ever put it on paper to begin with. And in the odd case when you really do have something only on paper, then you can use a fucking scanner, it'll surely won't happen very often.

Why are we even signing things anymore, when a digital signature would be a lot more secure and convenient?

Replacing a fax machine with a scanner + internet connection is just as retarded. It's the very fucking idea of keeping documents on paper that must go. We have desktop computers, laptops, tablets, digital frames and cellphones, and you can get your documents on all of those devices, instantly. Why the fuck do people print anymore is the real question.

Better article

[Anonymous Coward]

...From a more reputable news outlet which doesn't split their articles up into two page
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-fax-machines-still-pretty-impressive-if-you,21256/

I'm sure the 2-day difference in the article dates is completely coincidental. ;)

It's a scanner people can use

[SuperKendall]

The thing about a fax is, that anyone can use it properly in its default configuration.

Scanning for most people is fraught with troubles, from too large files they cannot email, to losing files saved who knows where, to simple connection problems between scanner and computer. Meanwhile the fax still just works, unless you are lucky enough to work at a place that has rigged up a well-run scanning infrastructure for you.

Re:It's a scanner people can use

[Alan Evans]

This is exactly right. Try teaching a 55+ yr old accountant or bookkeeper when he/she should use black&white vs color, 150 vs 300 vs 600 dpi and the difference between JPEG, TIFF and PDF. Then teach them how to enter their email address on the network scanner printer using only the number keys then how to forward that email without sending it to 500 other people accidentally and without blowing up email quotas. - OR - you can teach them to put the original in the feeder, punch in a phone number, press send.

The truth is even many fax machines have different photo/text settings, contrast settings, quality settings but no one other than us IT types ever considers those.

Re:It's a scanner people can use

[sjames]

Don't be so sure. Even when the other person insists they must send the document as a fax, don't be surprised if it takes 4 or 5 rounds as they send you a cover sheet with no fax, 5 blank pages (must be set too light), 5 black pages (oops, set it too dark), 5 blank pages again (wrong side up in the fax all along), half of the document (ops, jammed), and several other imaginative fails. Finally, they send you one where the pages went in crooked but since you can guess at the missing bits you just tell them it came through fine so you can be done with it.

Bullshit

[BenBoy]

Fax machine. Plug it in. It just works. Something computers still just dream of.

Re:Send/recieve well over 100 per day

[Anonymous Coward]

MD chiming in. Faxes are reliable and verifiable. You get a confirmation that it connected and set. There are no spam filters, no worry about hacked email, no passwords. As long as your put in the correct number, it always lands at exactly the correct place.

Computers can only dream of such simplicity.

Re:Want a big reason?

[pstorry]

As others have said, they offer this as an option, but nothing more.

The clock can be set incorrectly, the sending number set incorrectly, and all sorts. (These we call a TSI - Transmitted Subscriber Identification.)

I'm managing a fax system that handles around 100,000 faxes a week (I work for a large financial insitution). If the sender's number in the TSI was even remotely useable, we'd be able to route faxes on it - but is just isn't. Something like 50% of all faxes we receive - often from large household financial names that should know better - have a junk TSI.
That's 50% of volume, by the way. When we break it down to senders, it's well over 75% incorrect.

So whilst in theory we could route faxes via TSI, in practice we route faxes via the inbound number that the sender dialled. Nothing else is reliable or usable for routing faxes to their destination mailbox/application/printer.