Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

Yes, mine has a "Talk" button (pic of identical model from Google search):
https://www.vatera.hu/canon-fax-230-...703456323.html

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

Is Telex still in use? My company still has fax (not used much) but dumped Telex 25 years ago.

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

Here's an interesting article on their continuing popularity in Japan! https://www.noted.co.nz/money/busine...e-fax-machine/

I can see why they held on for so long here. To avoid medico-legal complexities, it was perhaps important to have proof that a consultant or doctor had signed-off a certain treatment - literally, by seeing the signature on a piece of paper. And unlike with email, someone could literally stand by a fax machine and wait for this to come through while doing another task on their feet.... I know my pharmacist still does this.

And then there's the rather less-than-agile capacity of medical comms - nationwide, between different service providers. Didn't it take ages and £ billions for a failed pilot for hospitals to be able to see GP records a few years ago?

I wonder what will happen to all those tens of thousands of machines. I hope there's a scheme in place to recycle the plastic and recoverable electronic 'scrap.'

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

Last time I came across Telex was in the early-2000s: it was kept on particularly in the shipping world because - unlike faxes - a Telex was at the time globally recognised as legally binding from a contractual perspective - important if you're ordering stuff like 5,000 tons of heavy oil to fuel your ship when it docks at its next port.

Though discontinued as a subscriber-service by BT in the mid-2000s the "GMDSS" marine distress network infrastructure still supports Telex!

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

Most 'commercial waste' companies will reject waste that is 'contaminated' with electronic stuff so electronic junk in significant quantities ends up in the site "WEEE skip" - that's where all the old PCs, monitors, printers, keyboards, mobile-phones, lightbulbs, batteries etc. my larger clients threw out went.

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

How many 'lines' was a fax image - say for an A4 page? Were there colour faxes?

Steve

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

Group 3 fax standard 100 lines per inch h and v, up to a superfine setting of 400 x 400.

ITU-T30e for faxing in color; however, it is not widely supported, so many of the colour fax machines can only fax in colour to machines from the same manufacturer. (from wikipedia)

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

In my first 'permanent' job we had a 'telecopier' which had a rotating drum and would transmit or receive an A4 page in six minutes. It was hooked up to the one telephone in a room shared by five people so we were 'incommunicado' when it was handling traffic. It was a pressure environment but amazingly we got our work done efficiently - mainly due to that fact that 'those upstairs' would provide a considered and complete brief. When phones appeared on each desk we were soon on the slippery slope to 'brief by instalment'.

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

Before I retired I worked for a legal firm, and we certainly used fax as well as email and post for important communications where time was of the essence. Producing a fax "sent" receipt was certainly accepted by legal authorities as demonstrating that a document had been received, which could be vital in showing that absolute deadlines had been met if the recipient had mislaid the fax at their end. I well remember doing a stint of bank holiday cover when the office network went down, taking out all the phones, copiers and networked fax machines, and having to give urgent instructions to a foreign client on the one fax machine that had its own dedicated phone line that had been provided for just such an emergency.

I guess secure email ought to be reliable as long as you have a reliable internet connection: ordinary email certainly is not. My wife sends out scores of emails in connection with organizing rotas, and a proportion of them never get delivered. We have even experienced several examples of emails sent between our BT email mailboxes not arriving, despite no errors having been noted in the sender's outbox. Only last week a confirmation of a dentist's appointment sent by the dentist on Wednesday afternoon wasn't delivered until 4.30 AM on Saturday.

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

I know this sounds somewhat perverse this day and age, but what's wrong with confirming receipt of a fax - or any computer-derived message - with a verbal telephone call?

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

Every time I see mention of a fax machine, I am reminded of my old boss; the most decent chap I have had the pleasure to meet, but a complete technophobe.

One day, a new sample guitar arrived; perfect in every way apart from the colour. It was supposed to be flame red, but it was loser to orange.

He wrote a reply to the manufacturer complaining about the colour discrepancy, and to give them an example, he included a colour photograph.

RED, JUST LIKE THIS PHOTOGRAPH.

Re: Government bans fax machines in the NHS
 

When I worked in a solicitor's office 2001-4 the fax machine was fairly well used, often I would be asked to fax multi-page documents to another company. Sometimes this was too much for the machine's memory so I had to get one of the secretaries to use the scan & fax program.