Computers find fast fax solution
AS our company recommends and installs computerised fax solutions, I was interested to see the article entitled ''PCs fail to beat fax machines'' in last week's Technology Post.
For people who spend their day faxing newspaper articles to their friends, I agree that ''stand-alone fax machines remain easier to use''.
However, for the average business in Hongkong, a PC-based [personal computer] fax solution can be easier and cheaper to use than a stand-alone machine. It certainly would not be the dismal failure that your article suggests.
Adding a fax server to a company's LAN [local area network] saves about six minutes of the sender's time for every fax that they send.
This is because they no longer have to wait for their document to print, wait for their fax machine to be free, and finally wait while the recipient's fax machine is engaged.
For incoming faxes, DDI [direct dial in] telephone lines allow incoming faxes to be automatically routed to the correct person in your company. Faxes are received within seconds of them being sent, instead of lying in the fax pool for several hours.
The article also complains about compatibility problems. Well, if you buy such cheap equipment with its ''free'' software, what do you expect? We recommend using fax cards from the larger companies such as Intel or Gammalink. They have the resources to test the compatibility of their cards with a large number of fax machines.
In summary, stand-alone fax machines still have an important role in the home and office, especially when pre-printed documents need to be sent. However, in many offices, the majority of faxes are prepared using a word processor on a PC LAN. These offices will benefit from using PCs to send and receive their faxes.
DAVID BELLIS Senior sales engineer Pacific Rim Systems Limited
