A fax machine is still one of the most important components of an office along with printers and copiers. And it is still a common machine widely used. In order to learn why that is so and more, please read on.
Messages, documents and office papers are believed to be safer if sent by a fax machine rather than having them sent digitally. Messages sent digitally have the risks of being captured that are easy to access but with fax, this is not possible.
Emails get affected by viruses and malware. But fax line need not be integrated into the IT system. Even if it is done so, documents sent by fax are unaffected by viruses and malware of any kind.
During the span of the last decade, I needed the use of fax on several occasions when any other technique wouldn’t be feasible. I cite several such examples below:
- My application for health insurance overseas was asked by them to send by fax and they left me no other option.
- When I was coming home over for a vacation from overseas, in order to get airline tickets, I had to send in an application first for which the office needed me urgently to send in a fax.
- When I changed cities overseas, I needed to transfer all my balance from old city’s bank to my account in the new city without closing the old account, which I would be doing eventually but not immediately. It turned out that the new bank couldn’t help in this matter but I could send in such a request to the old bank by fax, which was in fact, a good possibility.
- I needed a fax to tell a university overseas to have my transcript sent over to another university. Other options like uploading a scanned application to their site seemed like a hassle. First I had to download the application form, fill it up, have it scanned to a small-sized file version and finally have the file uploaded to their site, which seemed like a tiring process. A fax option for the purpose seemed like an easier one.
Summing up, because of the security and ease of use a fax machine caters for, it is difficult to undermine its benefits. Therefore, even though technology will continually give birth to new machines which can be used as office supplies, a fax machine refuses to deplete its position from office environment.
