Remember faxes?

[beige_alert]

Remember the fax machine? When was the last time you used one? In the cleaning-out process I just found some documents from 1990 when a fax machine was being purchased for the lab I started working in five years later. $1500 to $2500 for a fax machine, the kind that uses curling-up quick-fading thermal paper. There was a laser-printer model for $3200. Aside from not having any use for a fax machine anymore anyway, it's hard to imagine them as exotic, costly technology rather than a bonus unimportant feature built into a cheap ink jet printer.