Fax and Scan

Think about this--
Faxing via windows has always been sort of basic, unless you used a third
party fax program.
The multiple addressees capability was likely limited to prevent "fax spam",
and keep MS out of that hassle.
Several earlier versions of windows had a modem command reply parser that
had problems, and was patched to "fall through" when the problems occurred.
The only symptom shown to the "normal" user was that the taskbar icon showed
P/C to modem connect speed rather than the true connect rate. The specific
cause was that the data read from the modem might have garbage characters in
front of the actual reply string. Since these characters were random, and
the exact number was also random, it was not a simple fix when you added in
the variation in delay times from one modem to another. This was compounded
by "hardware" and "software" modems. The "software" modems required a mfr
supplied driver, which often did not meet the windows interoperability &
programming standards. (The mfrs had to "cheat" to make the drivers work)

When you add the screaming and yelling from various software houses that
sold specialty fax software (for business)
It's no wonder that MS provided/provides minimal fax capability. Another
issue was that the TCPIP stack required additional functionality to support
fax over a network. In win 3.1(1) this was provided by software houses with
a custom TCPIP stack. MS decided that the add-ons to the stack might cause
a vulnerability, and elected to not implement them in later versions of
windows that came with MS TCPIP stack. At the time, software houses had
problems getting full disclosure and information from MS.

At one point it looked like the fax software was going to cause as big a
legal hassle as the IE/Netscape/Mozilla debacle.
(So, all in all, it's not to surprising that windows fax functionality is
not what some would like it to be.)

Now if you decided to complain about the Vista versions that don't and
should have fax capability, I'd agree that this was a really dumb move, and
was (pure conjecture) likely left out to reduce the support headache that
windows fax has always caused.

"Ms. Accountability" <Ms. Accountability.DeleteThis@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:F5B222CB-B90C-49D7-B4C2-611C66589D56@microsoft.com...
>I disagree with Dave. It is a big deal that we consumers of Vista have to
>go
> back to the dark ages and fax documents as such instead of leveraging the
> convenience of our computer technology. We multitaskers don't have time
> to
> consistently print and fax ...
>
>
> "Dave" wrote:
>
>> I have an HP 6110 AIO... and Vista Home Premium.
>> To send the few faxes that I do, I just print out a document, and fax it
>> manually, no big deal.
>>
>> To scan, which I do very frequently, I purchased VueScan, which works
>> very
>> well.
>> http://www.hamrick.com/
>> Free trial period.
>>
>>
>>
>> "Stang Cobra 04" <StangCobra04.DeleteThis@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
>> message
>> news:EC6ACD26-E56B-4175-BC8D-FBFA12D06F65@microsoft.com...
>> > When I had a computer meltdown, I upgraded from XP to a computer with
>> > Vista
>> > Home Premium edition. I spent the extra money only to lose an
>> > important
>> > feature, the ability to send faxes and to scan with my HP All-in-one
>> > psc
>> > 2410. I do not want to upgrade to Ultimate and pay for a bunch of
>> > features I
>> > don't want and would not use. Microsoft should give a lot of thought
>> > to
>> > selling Fax and Scan is an upgrade feature. It could be downloadable
>> > from
>> > the Microsoft website.
>> >
>> > Like many users, I've been using Microsoft starting with DOS-MS. I
>> > little
>> > customer support with the lack of an important feature would be a good
>> > PR
>> > move for Microsoft.
>> >
>> > ----------------
>> > This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
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>> > "I
>> > Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow
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>> >
>> > http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default....x?mid=e
>>
>>