Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Leo Simpson , B.Bus.
Editor
Greg Swain , B.Sc.(Hons.)
Technical Staff
John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.)
Robert Flynn
Darren Yates
Reader Services
Ann Jenkinson
Sharon Macdonald
Sales & Marketing Mgr.
Sharon Lightner
Phone (02) 979 5644
Mobile phone (018) 28 5532
Regular Contributors
Brendan Akhurst
Jennifer Bonnitcha, B.A.
Garry Cratt, VK2YBX
Marque Crozman
John Hill
Jim Lawler, MTETIA
Bryan Maher, M.E., B.Sc.
Jim Yalden, VK2YGY
Bob Young
Photography
Stuart Bryce
Editorial Advisory Panel
Philip Watson, MIREE, VK2ZPW
Norman Marks
Steve Payor, B.Sc., B.E.
SILICON CHIP is published 12 times
a year by Silicon Chip Publications
Pty Ltd. A.C.N. 003 205 490. All
material copyright©. No part of this
publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher.
Printing: Magazine Printers Pty Ltd,
Alexandria, NSW; Macquarie Print,
Dubbo, NSW.
Distribution: Network Distribution
Company.
Subscription rates: $42 per year
in Australia. For overseas rates, see
the subscription page in this issue.
Liability: Devices or circuits described in SILICON CHIP may be
covered by patents. SILICON CHIP
disclaims any liability for the infringement of such patents by the manufacturing or selling of any such
equipment.
Editorial & advertising offices:
Unit 1a/77-79 Bassett Street, Mona
Vale, NSW 2103. Postal address:
PO Box 139, Collaroy Beach, NSW
2097. Phone (02) 979 5644. Fax
(02) 979 6503.
ISSN 1030-2662
2
SILICON CHIP
PUBLISHER'S LETTER
The truth about fax machines
These days, virtually every business organisation has a fax machine. If you
want to communicate quickly, at any hour, to virtually anywhere in the western
world, the fax is unbeatable. In our office here at SILICON CHIP, the fax machine
is used a great deal by our readers and advertisers.
Quite a few of our readers now send their letters in by fax and that is how we
then send the reply. Depending on who is in the office on any one day, we can
often send a reply within an hour or so of receiving a fax. And it is a much
quicker way of sending in orders, although they must be accompanied by your
credit card number, expiry
date and signature.
But fax machines can a
pest. First of all, there are
junk faxes. These are faxes
from organisations who
seem to think that all we do
is stay glued to the machine
waiting for their breathless
messages. Well, we don't
know what other organisations do with these faxes
but we have a waste paper
basket right next to the fax
machine. We have no use
for press releases which are
not related to electronics in
some way and which are not accompanied by a photo. Some public relations
organisations think that a thousand words is worth more than a picture.
And inevitably, junk faxes are preceded by a "fax cover sheet". This is a
header sheet with the company's name on it and the sender's details, telling you
that the next sheet or sheets are from the named company. You would be
surprised just how common this sort of nonsense is. So not only does the
receiving company have to waste paper in getting the fax, there is also the waste
of the "fax cover sheet".
Then there are the organisations who get an error message after sending a fax
which may run to as much as 10 pages or more. Most of the time such error
messages (saying that the pages have not been sent) are wrong but the usual
response is to send the whole 10 pages again. Wouldn't it be nice to pick up the
phone instead and ask if the first fax was received? A little common sense would
save a lot of fax paper.
The correct way to use a fax is to grab a single sheet of paper, type or write
down your message and send it. If you need to use more than one sheet of paper
then your message is probably too long. As our own correspondents could
testify, more than 95% of our letters in reply fit easily on one page.
So if you are in the habit of sending out faxes, think about the company or
organisation that you are sending it to. Do you really need to send two or more
sheets when one will do? And if you are from a public relations organisation ,
think about your "public relations". Do they really need to receive your fax?
And finally, what about those companies who use fax machines with polling
facilities? These machines will dial a number as many times as it takes to get a
message through. This can be a real pain to the person on the receiving end as he
keeps getting "bleeped" by a fax machine with the wrong number. We have had
this happen twenty or thirty times before the machine or its operator finally
realises that it's dialling the wrong number. It must drive receptionists mad and
the cost in phone calls to the organisations concerned must be very high.
So fax machines can be a boon but they can also be a pest if they are not used
sensibly.
Leo Simpson
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