One bad habit I have (or maybe a good habit) is that I don’t get rid of all of old computers. That’s a problem when there are old machines that don’t work kicking around (maybe waiting to salvage a drive or something), but I have a few that will still boot up and can be useful now and then. Tonight was one of those times.
We’ve been working on college applications, and realized we needed to make a correction on one. The college sent a form that they require you to fax back for security reasons because it has sensitive information. I get that, but who has a fax machine anymore?? Sure, I could perhaps have used an online fax service, but that would be a pain and no more secure than emailing the form. I could take it to a print shop and pay someone to fax it for me, or I could have even gone to the office and used the fax machine there (but this is purely for personal use, so that seemed wrong).
Fortunately, my eye landed on an old laptop I had gotten out when trying to hook up a scanner (I eventually got the scanner to work on my new computer, thankfully, but hadn’t stowed the old G4 Powerbook. Glancing at the ports reminded me that one was a phone port, so I thought I might see if I could get it to fax for me.
I cranked it up, logged into my network, set the date on the clock to 2018 (why not?), and then transferred my pdf file from my MacBook Pro to the desktop of my Powerbook. Then I had to figure out how to fax again — it’s probably been close to a decade since I’ve done it. Help told me to install the Internal Modem in Printers and Faxes, then I printed the document, chose Internal Modem as my printer, entered the number (after connecting the computer to the phone wall jack, of course), hit print and listened to the good old-fashioned sounds of the modem dialing and connecting to the fax machine on the other end. After what seemed like forever, the fax was done and the print job went away.
That saved me a fair amount of time and possibly money, and while I was at it, I looked at a few photos on my old desktop for nostalgia’s sake. Sure, I could recycle the Powerbook, but now and then it still comes in handy!
Kendall Dunkelberg 