Samsung SF-3100/T Inkjet Plain Paper Fax

...I'm very pleased with the Samsung on this.

The samsung is also nice and compact and well-designed: it looks like it cost a lot more than the £200-odd it actually does cost. In fact this nearly put us off buying it as we thought it might disguise a shoddy product but we were wrong. Furthermore, it's an ink-jet which means that the ink lasts a lot longer than on faxes that use that funny carbon-paper roll stuff (again, our old fax was ...
.../> The downside of the Samsung is that it is not as easy to use as our old one. In order to send a fax, you have to dial the number with the monitor on (so everyone in the office can hear you dialing) and then click a button to go: many faxes do this automatically. Also when copying you have to strp through all of the options - there's no copy-default-settings function. And my last niggle does also apply to almost all faxes: why do I have to waste ... more

Many small faxes develop problems within a year (but obviously after the 6 month gurantee has worn out), but this one hasn't given us a flicker yet (and we've had it over a year now).

Let me explain. It appears that, especially at the bottom end of the market, many faxes and printers have rollers made of a cheap kind of rubber that degrades after about a year. This is infuriating, but can be fixed by taking the thing apart and cleaning the rubber rollers with something like switch-cleaner fluid (or any non-water based cleaner. We've been known to use whiskey). I am very pleased to say that this has not yet happened with our new fax, although it happened several times with our old fax until it became clear that the rollers would need to be replaced completely, at which point we traded it in (I've completely forgotten what brand that fax was, but it wasn't Samsung). I'm very pleased with the Samsung on this.

The samsung is also nice and compact and well-designed: it looks like it cost a lot more than the £200-odd it actually does cost. In fact this nearly put us off buying it as we thought it might disguise a shoddy product but we were wrong. Furthermore, it's an ink-jet which means that the ink lasts a lot longer than on faxes that use that funny carbon-paper roll stuff (again, our old fax was one of these). In fact we haven't had to change the ink cartridge yet, so I'm afraid I don't know exactly how much they cost, but I'm assuming they're comparable to the price of printer ink-jet cartridges. As with many of these things, it also functions as a copier and you can change the size/ darkness setting on the output: generally very useful.

The downside of the Samsung is that it is not as easy to use as our old one. In order to send a fax, you have to dial the number with the monitor on (so everyone in the office can hear you dialing) and then click a button to go: many faxes do this automatically. Also when copying you have to strp through all of the options - there's no copy-default-settings function. And my last niggle does also apply to almost all faxes: why do I have to waste paper on a "transmission report" every time a transmission fails (I can read it in the display clearly enough), and every 20 faxes or so? It's really quite annoying. 

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