Panasonic introduces KX-PW821 fax machine with a touchscreen and stylus, world may never be the same
By Tim Stevens 
posted July 8th 2010 8:02AM
posted July 8th 2010 8:02AM
posted July 8th 2010 8:02AM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
I'd rather buy this one =)
http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/apple-touchscreen-phone-circa-1983
WTF is a FAX Machine?
Apply year 2000 technology to a 1980's device! How far we've come.
To all you people saying that you need a touchscreen to write Asian languages, I prefer typing my Japanese a lot more than I do writing it, but I'm a gaijin so what do I know. Still though, when you've got the option of writing a ten stroke kanji or just typing the word and hitting space a time or two, I'll take hitting space any day.
Also don't they still regularly use faxes in Japan? For some reason, I was thinking they still hadn't died over there.
@Yandereboat Always taking the easy way out wont get you far for long :P
Although you must know that if you've managed to get that far.
@hawthorneluke Well my handwriting is shit regardless of language, but my Japanese is a little better than my Roman alphabet, since I've had less time to develop bad habits. I still can't see how handwriting would be preferrable, though. I'd rather type sora and press space than write out 空, and that's not even a big one.
Gotta love the cute tiny Naginata-ka / Stylus-ka.
When I lived in Japan even in the 90's, we *all* had fax machines to send maps to each other. You see, there are no street addresses. Your postal address is a ridiculous meiji-era fractal recitation of decreasing semi-cartesian granularity. Rumored to be that way to confound invaders... So, the only efficient way to direct someone to your place, or the bar, or whatever, is - send a map (that you probably just drew) by fax. So the touchscreen is *very* useful.
1. Not sure why this is news at all - they've had several different pen-input fax machine models like this in prior years from other companies as well. Not anything 'new' to the Japanese market at all - only the latest model out this year, that's all.
2. Fax still has uses.
Draw a map, annotate a document quickly, etc. and send it right away. No problems opening it, taking it with you, etc. vs. phones (no standard yet) or PCs (heavy).
No need to worry about printing either - pretty much push a button if it's gone to memory instead of paper output. There, no silly drivers to install, PC cables, etc.
Confirmed delivery - practically immediately once sent to a non-busy fax line and transmission confirmation is upon the screen.
Email? lol.... you know there is NO guarantee for email delivery in the world right now for most (yahoo, gmail, hotmail, etc. - nothing there in them protocols that guarantees it).
Security. Land line transmission from fax to fax is still far more secure vs. Internet for the majority out there. Internet? Just drop your software on any PC in the hops between host and receiver, and unless you've PGP encrypted the email, sorry - you can grab all that info right out of plaintext email transmissions.
3. Paper still has benefits.
It's still what the world requires as documentation.
Love to go digital, but no single standard for document storage, digital signature, or digital ID or unaltered doc verification.
That said, governments and financial firms around the world love paper for just about everything you need - Passports, IDs, bank accounts, etc etc.
Lightweight, easily carried, durable.
Yeah, try crumpling your phone into a ball, jumping on it, sticking it in your back pocket, and god .... just wait until the battery runs out! lol.....
Paper - sorry, works in all the above conditions far cheaper.
Just because digital is available doesn't mean it's the best.
And annotations? well, they pretty much are as easy with any pencil or pen, and lasts forever, too
No rules yet about using paper or pen while driving, unlike cell phones and laptops inside cars.
4. Physical vs digital in long-term storage.
Anyone have a 5" floppy disc drive that works? 3"?
What once were the MOST popular forms of storage in the late 20th century is now ..... completely unreadable to the majority of PC users out there today. They simply don't have the software, drives, or connections required to read info off of any of their floppy discs still in storage.
Paper? Can't recall any reason properly stored paper documents couldn't be read by a living person after 100+ years. Even Fax paper properly stored can last decades (easily photocopied for the very important for 100+ year storage).
5. In Asia, where Chinese characters are often used, writing by pen is the fastest way around. You can easily crank out letters far faster by pen than typing (continuous script) anyday, and you've got to be joking if you think typing is far faster.
(Go visit some Chinese Character calligraphy classes and ask the masters to copy an article using continuous script by pen. Almost the same as watching those 9 year old Asians with abacus beat American 20+ year olds with calculator examples on YouTube. Sad, so sad - why on earth allow calculators on SAT exams? Asians don't even need their abacus and can beat them on speed.)
I'd just like to point out the just because a technology is old doesn't automatically make its' usefulness or it's ability to fulfill it's intended purposed somehow not possible.
the internal combustion engine and automobiles, the camera (not the means of capturing the image, the device itself) electric generators and electricity , radio, under sea cables, airplanes are all by this point in time fairly old technology but if we didn't have them many of the things modern people do everyday couldn't happen.
A fax isn't interesting but as others pointed out asian scripts are not as easily typed as they are written as compared to latin based ones and there are a lot more people who use them than the entire population of the US is you consider just the chinese and japanese markets instead of thinking that this is a product for the manly english speaking US.
Also consider the fact that this isn't a fax for the big offices that can and do use "smart" copiers and scanners to email stuff around, it is a home/ small business type item.
I know for a fact that enough japanese households have a fax that it shows up in many anime shows too, so it makes sense to me that a japanese company would make a product aimed at the japanese market that leverages that market's ongoing use of this technology, and update it with a touchscreen so as to offer a reason for people to buy it.