I went from an older RICOH MP3010 that could fax to 1 of 250 numbers in the address book in 4 steps to a "new improved" Xerox Workcenter 5845 that takes EIGHT steps to send a single fax (some of the steps have a 1-2 second delay to them as well).
EIGHT steps to send a fax? Xerox, surely you're not a new player in the fax business? Is there any way to shorten the steps and make the interface intelligent instead of this over-engineered too-many-steps garbage? Is there perhaps a user-made app that does faxing right?
RICOH MP3010
1. Press Fax
2. Pick an alphabet button [AD] [CD] [EF] [GH] [IJK] [LMN] [OPQ] [RST] [TUV] [WXYZ]
OR just punch in the number on step 2 and press send (3 steps)
3. Pick name in list (short scroll up or down, if any)
4. press send/start
Xerox 5845
1. Press Fax
2. Press address book (tiny little icon on right -- should DEFAULT to address book)
OR punch in the number manually, then click add to senders, then click start (4 steps)
3. Press search (no way to skip alphabetically like the RICOH or almost any other professional copier/fax)
4. Type partial name (don't get it partially wrong, the search is not clever)
5. Press OK, wait a couple seconds
6. Pick name in list
7. Press add to sender list
8. Press Start
As it stands, everyone that works here wants this new copier/fax/scanner gone, including the owner. Not only is the fax interface the one of the poorest designed interface I've ever seen, the fax failure rate has more than quadrupled since we replaced the RICOH. Even setting the XEROX to default to 14400 instead of 33600 doesn't improve this failure rate (this is the second, bug big, complaint).
We're a busy place, there are over a dozen staff who constantly fax PO's, confirmations, drawings, quotes, etc., hourly and another 20 that fax a few times a week. Everyone complains about this new fax from Xerox. I wish we had gotten a demo model to try for a week...
