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86 Comments
- Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+88I seem to recall reading about such a magical device, although back then it was called a fax machine.
- afex, on 10/12/2007, -2/+47"It combines a special printer produced by Hewlett Packard with a web service that sends data to the printer over a normal phone line - no need for internet access or a computer."
a.k.a. a fax machine - noripcord7, on 10/12/2007, -5/+40Better have a decent spam filter.
- seweso, on 10/12/2007, -3/+34The presto styles are funny. They will drain your cartridge as fast as possible :P
1. Profit from overpriced printer + modem
2. Profit from overpriced monthly service
3. Profit from overpriced cartridges
4. Profit! - raynar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29I will put one next to my video phone.
- starvo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+27No man, it's FAX 2.0! It's the new generation. It supports AJAX, WYSIWYG, GUI, and NAFTA! And lets not forget the coupon printing.. err Spam.. er.. Oh *****.
- praisethelard, on 06/06/2008, -0/+19From the article:
"I should have done this before, but I dug into the potential spam issue a little more. You have to be an accepted sender for the printer to accept the email, so unsolicited spam will not be printed." - Hashiro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20@evilTak
Good luck trying to guess, and then spoof one of the accepted senders... - Haohmaru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15@coldphoenix
Which the elderly won't be able to figure out either. - cr125er, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16I've taught my 70 year old grandparents to use a computer. They can send emails, do online banking, capture pictures from a digital camera, and browse the net. If older people have an open mind and a patient teacher, there is no reason that they need dumbed down technology.
- Haohmaru, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15What is this "Fax" machine you speak of?
- tzmguitarist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16How many email appliances have to come out before someone realizes that they just don't work?
- Haohmaru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13You mentioned they need a "Patient Teacher".
Do you see the weak link in your argument? ;) - kbarrett, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Better idea.
Use carrier pigeons. Old people like pigeons. - saralk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10We should get one for Ted Stevens, it uses dial up so it won't clog the tubes
- LacY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9And you reply to the messages how? What's the use of one-way e-mail?
- Haohmaru, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11@evilspoons
You still don't need a fax machine on the other end. You could use eFax. - redfan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10The funny thing is that old people like to complain about how dumb "kids these days" are.
Imagine that if when television was first invented, some company had pandered to technophobes and told them to just flip through a magazine really fast so it'd be the same thing. - evilTak, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14Right, because you can't spoof an email address...
- betterth, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Instead of training and educational courses and helping people to "modernize", we tell them that avoiding new technology while still feelings it's benefits are fine.
I suppose there are those who will never want to touch a computer, but isn't the desire to use e-mail and send photos enough to spark the desire to learn?
Give them a mac and a DVD or VHS on how to use it. I guarantee they'll be okay in a little while. - coldphoenix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8There's an approved senders list.
- Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8And just wait till dear ol' grandma tries to use the phone to call her family when their e-mails are coming in and she gets a ear full of BRRZZZZIIIISSSSSSAAAAAAKHKHKHKHKH!
- maniaci137, on 10/12/2007, -8/+14And this is different than a fax, because?
- crawfishsoul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6MailStation FTW. Both of my grandma's have one and they love it. No printing, just a simple email terminal with a high-contrast LCD screen.
http://www.amazon.com/EarthLink-Mailstation-E-mail-Appliance-Black/dp/B00001WRJS - Hercynium, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9@chompy
I've already set this same sort of thing up... 6+ years ago. It was a linux server running hylafax and sendmail and connected to the internet. Email came into something like "sales@company.com" and some scripts rendered the content into a PostScript file which was then sent via hylafax to the client's fax machine. That way, they were able to accept email without having to actually have any computers at the office (don't remember why, but I don't get paid to ask)
Now that I think about it, I did another one, but that one actually dialed up to an ISP, used fetchmail or something like that to download email from the pop account and sent the faxes.
OLD NEWS. - jschrab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5My grandmother is 87 years old and has antiquated but good-enough-for-what-she-uses-it-for hand-me-down Pentium II running Windows 98. She has friends and family throughout the country and loves to write them and her simple dial-up account lets her do that.
"Old people" can *love* computers - they just need a good reason to bother with them. Email for keeping in touch with far away loved ones is a killer app for them.
This is a silly product using an advertising industry promoted stereotype to push it. - dadrew1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This is rather nifty really, could be good it seems to me. He updated the article to say that you have to on an approved sender's list, so that is cool, should block out the spam. I say bravo! :-)
- zrcochran, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Not because computers scare old people, but because old people are scared of robots. That's why I have Old Glory Insurance. Because robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=385463074903200409 - C0D3R, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5How about printing the photos and mailing them to grandma? Not every kind act needs intermediated by technology.
- WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3FTA
"...a special printer produced by Hewlett Packard with a web service that sends data to the printer over a normal phone line."
Umm...isn't that called a FAX machine?
Edit: damn I shoulda read the other comments.....this is like the zillionth mention of FAX! - GliTCH82, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The idea sounds promising at first but if you think about it there's a lot more complexity being introduced here than there would be if you teach your grandma to double click for Outlook Express
If you read some of the comments on that article's page, you will find that one user mentions it lets a techy monitor ink levels and such for the non-techy. Chances are, if you buy one of these for the grandma she probably doesn't live near you (hence the reason for you e-mailing her photos in the first place).
So now every time grandma's low on ink, you gotta make a trip? Wonderful. Grandma lives across the country? Oh, man. - railsroad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hasn't this already been done before?
I seem to recall several startups creating email terminals for home use in the late 90's and all of them failed. - johnstar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I got printout number 419?
- kidendless, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10now that's some innovation right there. i'm gonna get one and put it right next to my fax machine!
edit: aw, nuts. since i have no additional insight and will be dugg down anyway...granny's rack ain't so bad in that picture. just sayin' is all. - Gir53457, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Sounds scary. Hackers might steal my phone. Where Bubba? He died fourteen years ago Nana...
- Morsetlis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Technology isn't incompatible with old people, just stupid people.
- redfan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Part of learning how to use computers includes learning how to maintain them, just as you do with cars or a house, for example. Yeah, people would love it if there was an on/off button and that's all you had to worry about, but its a computer, not a toaster.
- flashboy131, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4a free trip to Jamaica... in color.
- suntereo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This product has LARRY KING written all over it.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I swear if they made that their slogan they'd be the biggest success ever.
- vvvv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I love it, a device for people who are too lazy and self-involved to take the time to call grandma. I'll take four.
- EmileVictor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yup. It's possible, but hard. I have managed to get my grandma to use Firefox (albiet requiring me to remove almost all trace of IE), Thunderbird, Skype, MSN, microsoft defender and AVG. Once they get the hang of those programs they tend to move onto stuff they want to use, for example Picasa or Google Earth.
I must say that this is a pretty good idea. It's great to be able to communicate with grandparents/parents in a way that makes them go "wow". I remember the first time I set my grandma up talking to relatives in France via webcam. She called my laptop a "magic box". :P - Alisic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you want old people to use e-mail I think it would be easier to set them up with a cheap computer and a kiosk like linux distro or something so they have one big icon for an e-mail cilent and one for a web browser and that's it. And use dial up. Cheaper in the long run and probably in the short run too.
- badnewsblair, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"with a web service that sends data to the printer over a normal phone line - no need for internet access or a computer"
... Wow! You mean I can get the Internet over the NORMAL PHONE LINE! Preposterous! The Devil's work. I'm sure of it! - floppytaco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's a Simpsons reference.
- Tawni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Someone needs to buy one for John McCain and maybe he'll stop believing paper and pencil are still the only way to go.
- billybob476, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Computers prey on old people because they use their medication for fuel.
Once the computers get hold of you you can't get loose, because they're made of metal, and computers are strong. - avsa, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4come on it's not so hard.
of course you CAN do it by having a email to fax service. Or you CAN do it by having a networked printer directly attached to a well configured linux server and you CAN do it by..
but then you lose the point doesn't you?
The idea is to make email with close friends and family. You plug it on and have email. But unlike your normal electronic mail this one grandma can actually keep in her grandson book, cut it and glue on the fridge door and take them to the club to show to her buddies.
You know there are people out there that don't like sitting in front of a pc you know.. - raynevandunem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This gives me an idea.
Instead of stopping at printed emails from loved ones, why not go for printed blog posts for the compu-phobic?
Essentially, it would be a personal printing press that would offer a far greater diversity of daily subject matter and opinion for those who would still prefer their news in print. This could also be ideal for photo feeds.
Imagine, daily high-quality pictures from your son's Flickr pictures of his trip to Paris, the latest updates from your favorite political blog, and so forth - all on readable, tangible, old-fashioned paper.
I'm certain that http://rss2pdf.com/ would come in handy if this were ever tried out.
To be honest, even at 19 years old, I'm sure that I would like something like this. After 2 or 3 years of surfing the web as my main source of media, I think that I'm ready to go back to basics with reading books and old-fashioned print (Wikipedia in print should be interesting as well). - keesj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I thought of this exact same idea a couple of weeks ago for a school project. It was rejected though, the teacher thought older people would just use the phone or something. But now HP releases the exact same product :/.
PS
Yeah, I know. It's not the most original ever but I still think it's funny I have a better vision than my teacher :D. -
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