OT Why is the fax machine not dead

On 4/13/2009 8:21 PM Mortimer Schnerd spake thus:

Or better yet as a GIF. PDF, while useful for lots of kinds of documents, is *horrible* for bitmapped images--el bloato. Nothing like getting a 4 megabyte PDF that takes 5 minutes for me to download (dial-up).

I've been making lotsa 16-colors GIFs lately (grayscale). Nice and small, easy to handle, all modern web browsers and mail clients can read 'em. Easy to make w/Paint Shop Pro.

David Nebenzahl wrote in news:49e40cc3$0$2720$ snipped-for-privacy@news.adtechcomputers.com:

PDF's should be optimized for "web" display. I am always amazed by the small size of the pdfs derived from my complicated word files with many pictures. 5 MB to a few 100 kB is normal.

Moreover, one can digitally sign pdfs once you're set up for that (OK, I have Acrobat 9 Pro - academic).

I agree with you. People insist on sending me faxes and I had to buy a new machine as old one was worn out. In 2 months, new machine has received only one fax and that was from a telemarketer.

Same thing for US postal service. In my part time consulting, I used to spend $10-20/month on postage and now only spend the cost of one stamp to customer that insists getting billed by mail.

For outgoing mail, a email would be no different than a fax for you. You'd still use paper to get signatures, etc., and when it was time to send, you'd drop in on the same machine. Then you'd push the email button instead of the fax button. I imagine that most of the people you fax to are people you routinely deal with (insurance companies, banks, etc). Once you've programmed in their email addresses, you would just pick them from the address book and hit send. Then you'd take the same paper copy and stick it on the stack for archiving. It would save you a little time (scanning might be quicker) and you would save phone charges. Otherwise there would be little difference expect if you send "big" documents -- which go quicker via email than fax.

I have a fax here, but I don' think I've used it in a year. I tell everyone it isn't working and then they email it to me.

re: Once you've programmed in their email addresses...

You are assuming that the recipients have an e-mail address into which to accept the documents. I can honestly say without any reservations, that no company has ever offered an e-maill address as a means of receiving signed documents.

The conversation typically goes like this:

Them: I can send you the forms that need to be signed by regular mail, email or fax. How would like me to send them? Me: email please. How should I send them back to you once they are signed? Them: You can either mail them back to PO Box xxxx or fax them to xxx- xxx-xxxx.

They almost always offer 3 ways to get the blank forms to me but never, ever offer anything other than mail or fax for getting them back - and I'm talking about dozens and dozens of major companies, not just 1 or 2 mom & pop shops.

Granted, I can't say whether or not the fax number they give actually produces a hard copy, or if it indeed goes into an e-fax electronic mailbox, but as I said, an email address has never been offered.

You may recall that I said that all of our outgoing faxes automagically get stored digitally on an archiving server, so it's very possible that many of the faxes we send actually end up as digital images on the receiver's end also. In other words, I'm well aware what the technology is capable of and the options available. All I know is we are always given fax numbers, not email addresses, to send them to.

I scanned my signature and I paste it on word docs I Email. Nobody who would take a fax has ever refused it. It is still not an original document, no matter how you send it electronically.

I usually just print out the paperwork, sign it, scan it into a pdf, and email the pdf back.

-- I usually just print out the paperwork, sign it, scan it into a pdf, and email the pdf back.

Step 1 - Print Step 2 - Sign Step 3 - Scan Step 4 - email

Step 1 - Print Step 2 - Sign Step 3 - Fax

On 4/14/2009 4:14 AM Han spake thus:

That's true, and people who make PDFs should be merciful and make them as small as practical. But what you're gonna have is a lower-resolution picture, which may make it useless. A raw GIF is always going to be smaller than any PDF made from an image; the file format puts a pretty hefty "wrapper" around the image.

Actually, an electronic document with a proper electronic signature is valid as an original. It's a little more than signing and scanning into PDF. You go into PDF and use a self-signing security feature (on my version 5.0). It produces a signature (visible or not visible) that allows both parties to verify the signature and to tell if the document has been altered.

Other forms of electronic signatures are things like your PIN number at the ATM. That's your perfectly legal electronic signature.

I do a lot of work with state and federal grants. They are almost all

You're missing out on a lot of super vacation packages!

Best get your fax back online double-quick.

re: we're talking multi-million dollar funding application with nothing but an electronic signature

And I can't transfer $100 from a joint account to one of the individual owner's accounts without submitting the request on-line

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I have a small business and tired of junk faxes and the machine ringing softly in the middle of the night. I turned my fax number off:)

The machine sits here mostly unused,. I ask everyone to e mail it to me instead.

Faxes and beepers are both mostly obsolete:)

beepers replaced with cell phones and so much more

I can't even do that. Got a new laptop recently and the wireless card was disabled. What the heck good does it do to give me a laptop that I can't use outside the office? On the upside yes I still have webmail and USB works, which is good because that's the only way I can get pictures off my camera (there's so many different reasons why a picture is literally worth more than a thousand words sometimes)

nate

My cellphone will never replace my pager/beeper. I've had the same service for 25 years and the same number for 20 years. Someone can always leave a message.

TDD

LMAO!

We have some Really Keen hi-rez HP scanners at work, that e-mail directly from the scanner, as .pdf files, and keep an audit trail of what they did. Most of us happily gave up our stand-alone low rez desktop scanners, either flatbed or those useless stick things where you had to stuff the paper through 'just so' or the lettering was illegible, and do all sorts of on-screen manipulations to make a mailable document out of the mess. People we deal with prefer product from these fancy scanners to standard fax. Of course, these Really Keen HPs are about $3500 a pop, but for a 15-person office pod, that is easily justifiable. And they are FAST. If we need something for internal use, we just email it to ourselves. It is in the inbasket by the time we walk back to our desks.

But yes, we still have an old-style fax machine, too. It may do 5-6 pages on a busy week.

-- aem sends...

Your router at home doesn't have places to plug a cable in?

-- aem sends...

It's sitting on top of a bookshelf in the living room; not particularly convenient. (it needs to be there, too - that's the only place that I could find to put it where I'd get a wireless signal in the basement, garage *and* upstairs.) And that rules out other places that one might want to do work-related stuff like hotel rooms/lobbies etc.

I tried to make it work at home once with a cable and I still couldn't make it happen. Too much security on their end and not enough puter skills on mine.

nate