|
||||||||||
| Fax Machines and Facsimiles
from your favorite manufacturers. We offer your favorite brands such as Brother
Canon HP Minolta NEC Okifax Panasonic Ricoh Samsung and Sharp. Choose from plain
paper fax machines and thermal units. Memory functions and mass fax programability
on select units. Select from a wide range of Fax Machines and Facsimile devices Brother Canon HP Minolta NEC Okifax Panasonic Ricoh Samsung and Sharp. Lowest everyday prices guaranteed. We have everyday discounts that is sure to make you happy. Abbreviation of facsimile machine, a fax machine is a device that can send or receive pictures and text over a telephone line. Fax machines work by digitizing an image -- dividing it into a grid of dots. Each dot is either on or off, depending on whether it is black or white. Electronically, each dot is represented by a bit that has a value of either 0 (off) or 1 (on). In this way, the fax machine translates a picture into a series of zeros and ones (called a bit map) that can be transmitted like normal computer data. On the receiving side, a fax machine reads the incoming data, translates the zeros and ones back into dots, and reprints the picture. The idea of fax machines has been around since 1842, when Alexander Bain invented a machine capable of receiving signals from a telegraph wire and translating them into images on paper. In 1850, a London inventor named F. C. Blakewell received a patent for a similar machine, which he called a copying telegraph. But while the idea of fax machines has existed since the 1800s, fax machines did not become popular until the mid 1980s. The spark igniting the fax revolution was the adoption in 1983 of a standard protocol for sending faxes at rates of 9,600 bps. The standard was created by the CCITT standards organization and is known as the Group 3 standard. Now, faxes are commonplace in offices of all sizes. They provide an inexpensive, fast, and reliable method for transmitting correspondence, contracts, résumés, handwritten notes, and illustrations. A fax machine consists of an optical scanner for digitizing images on paper, a printer for printing incoming fax messages, and a telephone for making the connection. The optical scanner generally does not offer the same quality of resolution as stand-alone scanners. Some printers on fax machines are thermal, which means they require a special kind of paper. All fax machines conform to the CCITT Group 3 protocol. (There is a new protocol called Group 4, but it requires ISDN lines.) The Group 3 protocol supports two classes of resolution: 203 by 98 dpi and 203 by 196 dpi. The protocol also specifies a data-compression technique and a maximum transmission speed of 9,600 bps. Some of the features that differentiate one fax machine from another include the following: speed: fax machines transmit data at different rates, from 4,800 bps to 28,800 bps. A 9,600-bps fax machine typically requires 10 to 20 seconds to transmit one page. printer type: Most fax machines use a thermal printer that requires special paper that tends to turn yellow or brown after a period. More expensive fax machines have printers that can print on regular bond paper. paper size: The thermal paper used in most fax machines comes in two basic sizes: 8.5-inches wide and 10.1-inches wide. Some machines accept only the narrow-sized paper. paper cutter: Most fax machines include a paper cutter because the thermal paper that most fax machines use comes in rolls. The least expensive models and portable faxes, however, may not include a paper cutter. paper feed : Most fax machines have paper feeds so that you can send multiple-page documents without manually feeding each page into the machine. autodialing: fax machines come with a variety of dialing features. Some enable you to program the fax to send a document at a future time so that you can take advantage of the lowest telephone rates. As an alternative to stand-alone fax machines, you can also put together a fax system by purchasing separately a fax modem and an optical scanner. You may not even need the optical scanner if the documents you want to send are already in electronic form. Fax (short for facsimile or telefacsimile) is a telecommunications technology used to transfer copies of documents, especially using affordable devices operating over the telephone network. Such faxes became affordable and very popular in the 1980s. They transfer one or a few printed or handwritten pages per minute in black-and-white (bitonal) at a resolution of 100x200 or 200x200 dots per inch. The transfer rate is 14.4 kilobits per second (kbit/s) or higher. The transferred image formats are called ITU-T (formerly CCITT) fax group 3 or 4. The most basic fax mode transfers black and white only. The original page is scanned in a resolution of 1728 pixels/line and 1145 lines/page (A4). The resulting raw data is compressed using a modified Huffman code optimized for written text, achieving average compression factors of around 20. Typically a page needs 10 s for transmission, instead of about 3 minutes for the same uncompressed raw data of 1728×1145 bits at a speed of 9600 bit/s. The compression method uses a Huffman codebook for run lengths of black and white runs in a single scanned line, and it also uses the fact that two adjacent scanlines are usually quite similar, saving bandwidth by encoding only the differences. There are different fax classes, including Class 1, Class 2 and Intel CAS. Several different telephone line modulation techniques are used by fax machines. They are negotiated during the fax-modem handshake, and the fax devices will use the highest data rate that both fax devices support, usually a minimum of 14.4 kbit/s. A facsimile is a copy of something that is as true to the original as possible. One common use of the word is for books that reproduce exactly an older edition (for scholarly purposes and nostalgia). A digital facsimile, that is, a set of digital images, is a copy of the content of a book or document, including layout and images, but without copying the physical book form. Junk faxes are unsolicited advertising via fax transmission. Junk faxes are the faxed equivalent of spam (e-mail). Unsolicited advertising or sales via the telephone, known as cold calling, has been a common practice for decades. When fax technology became common, it must have seemed a logical next step to some to start sending "cold faxes" to publicly available fax numbers (companies and sometimes individuals generally indicate their fax number on business stationery and other materials). However, early fax was a fairly slow medium, requiring a tie-up of a phone line for up to 2 minutes. Furthermore, faxes require the consumption of fax paper, a commodity paid for by the recipient (and early fax technology required specialized paper). Unlike cold calls, which can be quickly terminated, fax advertising does not announce itself; and early termination, when possible, still wastes resources. A combination of these factors was likely the impetus behind the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 USC 227), or TCPA, which among other things specifically outlawed junk faxing: the use of any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine (paragraph (b)(1)(C)) The law provides for a minimum $500 restitution for a fax transmission deemed illegal under the Act. However, junk faxes generally break other rules mandated by the TCPA, such as requiring a fax transmitter to identify the source phone number and transmitting organization or individual on each page. Such additional infractions amplify the damages awarded. Furthermore, many states also have their own junk fax laws, which can increase total restitution for a single junk fax even further. The TCPA, in particular the junk fax provision, has been challenged on First Amendment grounds, but the law has withstood legal challenges. It is acceptable for an advertiser to send marketing material by fax if the recipient has agreed to receive it in advance. An MFP (Multi Function Printer/Product), multifunctional, all-in-one, or mopier, is an office machine that includes the following functionality in one physical body, so as to have a smaller footprint in a home or small-business setting (the SoHo market segment), or to provide better document management/distribution/production in a large-office setting: Printer Scanner Copier Fax (optional; a fax-less MFP may be upgraded to include a fax card later, using a standard port, e.g. USB) Media card readers (home units), to directly print digital camera memory cards. Hard disk (large office units) for document/image storage. An MFP can work both as a computer peripheral (using a computer port, like ethernet/WiFi-LAN, USB, FireWire, etc.) and autonomously (with no need for the computer connection; for example, to copy, fax and so on). Home or SoHo MFPs are usually ink jet-based, and thus allow colour printing and copying, but most large-office and a small number of relatively expensive SoHo units use a laser print engine for high-quality, low cost-per-page output at large volume. Some home units have sockets for various memory cards, allowing printing of pictures directly from digital cameras, without using a computer in between. Early models (in the 1990s) developed a poor reputation for compatibility and reliability, but have improved since. Some current MFPs cost less than the same as a good quality inkjet printer and a scanner, but cannot offer the same print quality, compatibility, and flexibility, and incur a higher cost of ownership (as a failure in any of the individual sub-systems requires that the entire unit be replaced). They do, however, take up less room than the equivalent separate components, can be used autonomously (with the computer turned off) and are popular for that reason. MFP manufacturers/brands include Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Konica Minolta, Lexmark, Ricoh, and Xerox. Alexander Bain invented a machine capable of receiving signals from a telegraph wire and translating them into images on paper. Facsimile (Fax) Invented in 1842 by Alexander Bain, a Scottish clockmaker, who used clock mechanisms to transfer an image from one sheet of electrically conductive paper to another. |