Remember faxes? Well they're still rubbish

A survey released today has confirmed what most of us already know but many may have forgotten - that fax machines were never the most useful piece of technology.

Faxes have been largely replaced in most offices by the rise, domination and eventual over-saturation of email. Now they are an unwelcome anachronism in many cases.

A survey commissioned by business communication company Equisys found that very few people have a good word to say about the office fax machine.

Eighty-three per cent of respondents said they often have to re-send faxes as the machine was sending incomplete pages.

Almost half the respondents said they have problems with faxes going missing in transmission - and even once they've arrived there's no guarantee they will reach the intended recipient.

Almost 60 per cent of respondents said central office fax machines become surrounded by randomly strewn documents that never reach the appropriate in tray. And this problem works both ways. Almost 50 per cent of senders said they are not confident their fax finds its way where it is meant to go.

Furthermore, with increasing levels of spam pouring out of the average office fax machine - thus levelling the playing field with email on the junk mail front - the gulf between the two forms of communication appears wider than ever.