Re:Windows Fax and Scan
by kyriakos on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @06:38AM
(#23626343)
Whats fantastic about this is how much Microsoft backwards compatibility extends. Fax is not a common use case in 2020 it could have been a separate application (even for an extra charge) but in order not to break the workflow of people upgrading its kept alive and bundled.
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Re:Windows Fax and Scan
by neilalexander on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @07:00AM
(#23626499)
On the one hand, the extreme level of backward compatibility is pretty great - it’s very rare that software stops working just because you upgrade Windows. In a business setting that is absolutely crucial, particularly given that there are so many companies in the world using software and databases that were written 15-20 years ago.
On the other hand, all of this weight has to go somewhere and that’s a pretty large part of why even fresh Windows installs have such a significant footprint. It might not be obvious on a typical desktop PC, but on many low-end tablets and laptops, it can eat a large amount of the already-restrictive storage space. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that this is a part of why Windows struggles to maintain popularity in the tablet space outside of the Surface line, and the Surfaces aren’t exactly entry-level.
I think it’s fine for things like this to be optional - given that fax isn’t widely used in a lot of the world, it seems like a strange thing to install by default.
You would be surprised, in some jurisdictions apparently sending a Fax is more legal binding than an email with the same scanned data, so...
Agree completely. Faxing is alive and well in 2020.