Best useless technology?

Best useless technology?

You’d be surprised how many fax machines are still in use, especially at financial institutions. Lots of places won’t allow you to submit a document by email, but will gladly take a fax.

9 Likes

College recruits still fax in their LOIs

2 Likes

Those Five and a quarter floppies really became obsolete.
image
It’s many, many years since I’ve seen a machine that that would still have a slot for them. Even emoji lists only have the Three and a half
:floppy_disk: :laughing:
Time to visit a museum

BTW: Found this, a site that has instructions for geeks on how to read the old disks.

Looks like we are going to have a lot of fun in a near future. Will be nice to recover some data that’s for now considered lost.

1 Like

In many states, emailing documents and prescriptions is not legal. Hence why there are still fax machines. End to end encrypted email may be allowed.

4 Likes

It was only a couple of years ago that the last Telegram was sent. These things could hang on for a while.

The Woot app.

9 Likes

I actually had to buy an old 5.25" drive to recover data for a client a couple years ago. And it was like two months since i had looked at two I had and thought, ‘Never going to need those again.’… hmm, come to think about it, I have several 5.25" discs of fonts that I really ought to copy from before they are lost…

Not that long ago we took a pile to the recycling station, because blah blah blah, but I still have some that I refused to give up.
Yes, hmm! Never say never. :thinking:

Had a customer try to fax me something the other day. I told him that I can’t receive faxes where I live. He asked where I lived that I couldn’t get faxes. “2021” I said.

Cell phones have a scan function for a reason.

3 Likes

Still got my 5 1/4 floppy, labeled “please don’t drop me”

Also don’t miss a beeper. Used one until I quit emergency services in 2010. I dreaded that thing going off

2 Likes

My work office still uses a Fax machine for some things. Guess we are behind the times a bit lol.

2 Likes

I work in healthcare and we still rely heavily on fax machines to transmit Personal Health Information (PHI). We have end to end encryption for email and a dedicated app for transmitting information to/from patients but the good old fax machine is the fastest and easiest way to send and receive forms and records.

You’d be surprised (or not if you work in any kind of field with technology) how hard it is to teach someone to open an encrypted email.

“I have to click on the link? But my son told me not to click on links in emails if I didn’t know where they came from.”

“Do I have to log in? What’s my username and password?”

“I don’t have a printer to print out this form and fill it out.”

“Where do I log into the Apple Store to get to my health information?”

“The App Store? Oh, I don’t do that. My grand kids help me with that.”

“Do you know the answers to my security questions?”

8 Likes
1 Like

I would play with one of these for hours as a small child

3 Likes

Pagers, which - if you still own one - make decent paperweights (the again, does anyone still use paperweights :thinking:?).

3 Likes
1 Like

I went fax machine too because I feel like it was the most impactful technology for the longest period of time but today you can send and receive faxes though MS Outlook so you don’t technically still need a Fax Machine. Also a lot of copiers have faxing capabilities built in.

2 Likes

The ***facsimile ***is the only one that still half ass serves a purpose. The beeper was just a phone number wasted. 35mm cameras have been obsolete since the phone camera took off. Floppy diskettes? HA!!!

Fax machines are still the best. Love them.