Monday, February 23, 2009

Fa(n)x for the memories


By midnight tomorrow, we will no longer have a fax line. For the past nine years we've had the fax - and modem - plugged into a dedicated line here and in previous offices on Henley and Oxford. Nowadays, there's simply no need with a hub and a wireless network keeping us connected to the world.


Nine years ago, in the days of dial-up Internet connections and exceedingly long CompuServe email addresses, faxes rattled through the machine at the rate of a few a day. Up to last year, one company still sent regular purchase orders and receipts that way, but now the only regular fax user I know is my dad.


Really, as soon as email took off faxes became cul de sac technology, though some industries, notably the legal profession, were slow to ditch the electronic paper trail in favour of the electronic paper-less trail.


My current fax machine is also a scanner, copier and printer, so it'll stay where it is in the office. And if any client really does want to go back to the old technology, I'll just grab an extension cable and plug it into another phone line socket.


I doubt I'll lament the loss of this particular piece of technology but it's yet another piece of business kit that I've seen dumped by the market in my working life along with the likes of the electric typewriter, the telex and the VHS.
I wonder what'll be next?

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