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From: dennisg@felix.UUCP (Dennis Griesser)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Request for poll of ten best/worst products of 88
Message-ID: <77200@felix.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jan 89 09:06:19 GMT
References: <210@imspw6.UUCP> <109@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Sender: news@felix.UUCP
Reply-To: dennisg@felix.UUCP (Dennis Griesser)
Organization: FileNet Corp., Costa Mesa, CA
Lines: 42

From article <210@imspw6.UUCP>, by bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch):
> The losers category:
>         The proliferation of cheap FAX machines, X percent of which attach
>         to computers.  Not that there arent legitimate uses for a FAX
>         machine here and there, but sometimes I think American businessmen
>         must all take stupid pills;  most if not all of the uses I actually
>         see FAX machines being put to could be far more effectively and
>         inexpensively handled by cheap modems sending WordPerfect formatted
>         files over the phone lines using Procomm.  Media hype wins again...

In article <109@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> len@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Leonard P Levine)
writes:
>I think you miss the point on fax.  Many users do not keyboard well or at
>all.  Many jobs are on preprinted forms (orders, drawings, etc.) Fax is
>just right for this.  Fax on PC however, has other utility, such as remote 
>printing directly from a mainframe, and such.
> 
> We should not ignore the process, just because it takes 1000 times the band-
> width of the modem equivalent of the text.  The overall picture is
> more important than that.

I vote with Bob.

Fax is becoming a fad, much-used in places where it doesn't really need to be.
This includes most PCs, I think.

If you want to scrawl on a preprinted form and get it to somebody fast, one
of the cheap dedicated FAX machines might be a less expensive and more user-
friendly choice than a PC - especially since you have to add a scanner at the
transmitting end of a PC setup anyway.

If you have a PC anyway and figure that the added cost of a cheap Fax card
is better that buying a dedicated machine, you probably "keyboard" well enough
to just type the thing in.

Remote printing directly from a mainframe is the worst example that you could
use to justify Fax.  The printing is probably text anyway, and if the host
is smart enough to send graphics, he probably uses something better than Fax
anyway!

Fax has some good uses.  Fax has some good uses on a PC.  Fax on a PC is
currently being sold as if it's the greatest invention since sliced bread.