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More confusing than board designs is the terminology used to describe the motherboard. The industry is rife with words that mean the same thing as “motherboard” or have subtle variations from that definition. Here are some of the most common:

System boards. This term is little more than a desexed version of motherboard, introduced to the realm of personal computer by IBM when it introduced its first machine. At the time America was preoccupied with issues of sexual equality, and well-meaning but linguistically naive people confused issues of gender with sex. The term system board stands in its own right, however, because it indicates the role of the board as the centerpiece of the entire computer system. IBM continues to use the term to mean motherboard.

Planar boards. Although planar board may seem simply another desexed word for motherboard, it bears a distinction. Although all modern circuit boards are planar in the sense they take the form of a flat plane, the planar board in a computer forms the mounting plane of the entire system.

Baseboards. Intel often refers to the motherboard as the baseboard in many of its technical manuals. The company is not consistent about its usage—for example, the manual dated May, 1996, for Intel VS440FX lists the product as a “motherboard,” whereas the manual for the Performance/AU, dated December 1995, terms the product a “baseboard.” Again, there is a subtle distinction. A motherboard goes into a computer; a baseboard decorates the junction of a wall and the floor.

Main board. Apparently contributed by offshore motherboard-makers, the term main board may be a result of translation, but it is actually a particularly appropriate term. The “main board” is the largest circuit board inside and the foundation for the computer system and, hence, it is the main board in a computer’s case.

Logic board. In the realm of the Apple Macintosh, the term logic board often refers to the equivalent of a computer’s motherboard—notwithstanding, every printed circuit board inside a computer contains digital logic.

Backplane. Another term sometimes used to describe the motherboard in computers is backplane. The name is a carryover from bus-oriented computers. In early bus-oriented design, all the expansion connectors in the machine were linked by a single circuit board. The expansion boards slid through the front panel of the computer and plugged into the expansion connectors in the motherboard at the rear. Because the board was necessarily planar and at the rear of the computer, the term backplane was perfectly descriptive. With later designs, the backplane found itself lining the bottom of the computer case.

Backplanes are described as active if, as in the computer design, they hold active logic circuitry. A passive backplane is nothing more than expansion connectors linked by wires or printed circuitry. The system boards of most personal computers could be described as active backplanes, although most engineers reserve the term backplane for bus-oriented computers in which the microprocessor plugs into the backplane rather than residing on it. The active circuitry on an active backplane under such a limited definition would comprise bus control logic that facilitates the communication between boards.

Nothing about computers requires a motherboard. You could build a computer without one—at least if you had sufficient knowledge of digital circuits and electronic fabrication, not to mention patience that would make Job seem a member of the television generation. Building a computer around a single centralized circuit board seems obvious, even natural, only because of its nearly universal use. Engineers designed the very first mass-market computers around a big green motherboard layout, and this design persists to this day.

Motherboards exist from more than force of habit, however. For the computer manufacturer, the motherboard design approach has immediate allure. Building a computer with a single large motherboard is often the most economical way to go, at least if your aim is soldering together systems and pushing them out the loading dock. There are alternatives, however, that can be more versatile and are suited to some applications. The more modular approach used in some of these alternatives allows you more freedom in putting together or upgrading a system to try to keep up with the race of technology.

The motherboard-centered design of most computers is actually a compromise approach between two diametrically opposed design philosophies. One approach aims at diversity, adaptability, and expandability by putting the individual functional elements (microprocessor, memory, and input/output circuitry) on separate boards that plug into connectors that link them together through a circuit bus. You can change the power and personality of such a computer as easily as swapping boards. Such machines are known as bus-oriented computers because everything connects through a bus, akin to an expansion bus. The alternative concentrates on economy and simplicity by uniting all the essential components of the computer on a single large board, thus making a single-board computer. Each of these designs has its strengths and weaknesses.

Bus-Oriented Computers

At the time the computer was developed, the bus-oriented design was the conservative approach. A true bus-oriented design seems the exact opposite of the motherboard. Instead of centralizing all circuitry, the bus-oriented design spreads it among multiple circuit boards. It’s sort of the Los Angeles approach to computer design—it sprawls out all over without a distinct downtown. Only a freeway system links everything together to make a working community. In the bus-oriented computer, that freeway system is the bus.

The bus approach enabled each computer to be custom-configured for its particular purpose and business. You attached whatever components the computer application required to the bus. When you needed them, you could plug larger, more powerful processors, even multiple processors, into the bus. This modular design enabled the system to expand as business needs expanded. It also allowed for easier service. Any individual board that failed could be quickly removed and replaced without circuit-level surgery.

Actually, among smaller computers that preceded the introduction of the first IBM PC in 1981, the bus-oriented design originated as a matter of necessity simply because all the components required to make a computer would not fit on a circuit board of practical size. The overflowing circuitry had to be spread among multiple boards, and the bus was the easiest way to link them all. Although miniaturization has nearly eliminated such needs for board space, the bus-oriented design still occasionally resurfaces. You’ll sometimes find special-purpose computers, such as numerical control systems and network servers, that use the bus-oriented approach for the sake of its modularity.

Single-Board Computers

The advent of integrated circuits, microprocessors, and miniaturized assemblies that put multiple electronic circuit components into a single package, often as small as a fingernail, greatly reduced the amount of circuit board required for building a computer. By the end of the 1970s, putting an entire digital computer on a single circuit board became practical.

Reducing a computer to a single circuit board was also desirable for a number of reasons. Primary among them was cost. Fewer boards means less fabrication expense and lower materials cost. Not only can the board be made smaller, but the circuitry that’s necessary to match each board to the bus can be eliminated. Moreover, single-board computers have an advantage in reliability. Connectors are the most failure-prone part of any computer system. The single-board design eliminates the bus connectors as a potential source for system failure.

On the downside, however, the single-board computer design is decidedly less flexible than the bus-oriented approach. The single board has its capabilities forever fixed the moment it is soldered together at the factory. It can never become more powerful or transcend its original design. It cannot adapt to new technologic developments.

Modern technology has made most of us accept the inevitable obsolescence of computers, so the sting of the single-board approach now is much milder than with the first machines. Computers have almost reached the point of being throwaway devices. Locking a machine to a given level of technology is no hardship.

Notebook and sub-notebook computers all follow the single-board design for the sake of compactness. Squeezing everything onto a single board nearly eliminates the need for expansion boards sprouting up everywhere. By minimizing (or eliminating) connections between boards, the single-board design also improves the reliability of notebook machines—there’s less to jostle and work itself loose.

But the single-board approach is also becoming more prevalent on the desktop. The motivation is mostly price. Putting everything on a single motherboard allows computer-makers to save the cost of extra boards and connectors, which helps pare down the retail price of machines. Many of today’s computers are true single-board designs but still offer expansion slots for later adding options.

Some manufacturers have tried using today’s high-speed ports in lieu of an expansion bus to make sealed-box computers, designed to make maintenance costs for businesses essentially zero. With nothing to service or upgrade inside, these machines have no service costs during their operating lifetimes. So far, however, such an approach has not been a marketplace success.

Compromise Designs

Until computers became true mass-market products, most followed a design compromise. Rather than strictly following either the single-board or bus-oriented approach, computer-makers brought the two philosophies together, mixing the best features of the single-board computer and the bus-oriented design in one box. This was the design that IBM chose for its first Personal Computer, which set the design for almost two decades of desktop computers. In it, one large board hosts the essential circuitry that defines the computer, but it relies on additional circuits on secondary circuit boards and provides further space for expansion and adaptability.

Throughout the history of the computer, functions have migrated from auxiliary circuit boards to the motherboard to bring desktop systems closer to the ideal single-board computer design. Early computers required extra circuit boards for their serial and parallel ports. Modern computers pack those ports and USB (and even FireWire) ports on the motherboard. At one time, most system memory, mass-storage interfaces, high-quality sound circuitry, network adapters, and video circuitry all required additional boards. Now many systems incorporate all these functions on their motherboards.

At least three motivations underlie this migration: expectations, cost, and capability. As the power and potential of personal computers have increased, people expect more from their computers. The basic requirements for a personal computer have risen so that features that were once options and afterthoughts are now required. To broaden the market for personal computers, manufacturers have striven to push prices down. Putting the basics required in a computer on the main circuit board lowers the overall cost of the system for exactly the same reasons that a single-board computer is cheaper to make than the equivalent bus-oriented machine. Moreover, using the most modern technologies, manufacturers simply can fit more features on a single circuit board. The original computer had hardly a spare square inch for additional functions. Today, all the features of a computer hundreds of times more powerful than the original IBM PC will fit into a couple of chips.

As with any trend, however, aberrant counter-trends in computer design appear and disappear occasionally. Some system designers have chosen to complicate their systems to make them explicitly upgradable by pulling essential features, such as the microprocessor, off the main board. The rationale underlying this more modular design is that it gives the manufacturer (and your dealer) more flexibility. The computer-makers can introduce new models as fast as they can slide a new expansion board into a box—motherboard support circuitry need not be reengineered. Dealers can minimize their inventories. Instead of stocking several models, the dealer (and manufacturer) need only keep a single box on the shelf, shuffling the appropriate microprocessor module into it as the demand arises. For you, as the computer purchaser, these modular systems also promise upgradability, which is a concept that’s desirable in the abstract (your computer need never become obsolete) but often impractical (upgrading is rarely a cost-effective strategy).

Today, the compromise design survives in mainstream machines, although most motherboards delegate only their video circuitry to an expansion board—video being the one place where manufacturers are constantly adding improvements that benefit (mostly) game players. Most machines retain the capability for adding additional circuit boards, even though most people are not apt to bother.

Blade Servers

In the computer rooms of today’s businesses, a further variation on motherboard design is making itself prominent. Called the blade server, this new design puts an entire computer—actually a powerful server computer—on a single board that’s often the size of an expansion board (see “Expansion Boards,” later). These motherboards earn their name because the boards are wide and flat like a knife blade. The blades slide into a large board in a rack-mounted chassis like component boards would slide into a bus-oriented computer. The bus, however, only provides power and, sometimes, a network connection between the blades.

Blade servers have become popular because they allow several computers to fit where only one used to. They lower costs because each server requires no cabinet or power supply of its own. Also, individual servers can be replaced almost instantly by sliding the bad board out and a replacement in should there be a failure.

Despite the new technology, each blade is simply a single-board computer. The only change is that microelectronics have made its circuits more compact.

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As with data modems, fax modems must link up with your computer and its software. Unlike data modems, which were blessed with a standard since early on (the Hayes command set), fax modems lacked a single standard. In recent years, however, the Electronics Industry Association and the Telecommunications Industry Association have created a standard that is essentially an extension to the Hayes AT command set. The standard embraces two classes for support of Group 3 fax communications: Class 1 and Class 2.

Class 1 is the earlier standard. Under the Class 1 standard, most of the processing of fax documents is performed by computer software. The resulting fax data is sent to the modem for direct transmission. It includes requirements for autodialing; a GSTN interface; V-series signal conversion; HDLC data framing, transparency, and error detection; control commands and responses; and data commands and reception.

Class 2 shifts the work of preparing the fax document for transmission to the fax modem itself. The modem hardware handles the data compression and error control for the transmission. The Class 2 standard also incorporates additional flow-control and station-identification features, including T.30 protocol implementation, session status reporting, phase C data transfer, padding for minimum scan line time, quality check on received data, and packet protocol for the DTE/DCE interface.

These classes hint at the most significant difference between computer-based fax systems, which is software. Fax modem hardware determines the connections that can be made, but the software determines the ultimate capabilities of the system. A fax modem that adheres to various standards (classes as well as protocols) will open for you the widest selection of software and the widest range of features.

The widespread use of fax in business is a more recent phenomenon, and its growth parallels that of the computer for much the same underlying reason. Desktop computers did not take off until the industry found a standard to follow—the IBM computer. Similarly, the explosive growth of fax began only after the CCITT adopted standards for the transmission of facsimile data.

Analog

The original system, now termed Group 1, was based on analog technology and used frequency shift keying, much as 300 baud modems do, to transmit a page of information in six minutes. Group 2 improved upon that analog technology and doubled the speed of transmission, up to three minutes per page.

Group 3

The big break with the past was the CCITT’s adoption in 1980 of the Group 3 fax protocol, which is entirely digitally based. Using data compression and modems that operate at up to 14,400 bits per second, full-page documents can be transmitted in 20 to 60 seconds using the Group 3 protocol. New transmission standards promise to pump up the basic Group 3 data rate to 28,800 bits per second.

Resolution

Under the original Group 3 standard, two degrees of resolution or on-paper sharpness are possible: standard, which allows 1728 dots horizontally across the page (about 200 dots per inch) and 100 dots per inch vertically, and fine, which doubles the vertical resolution to achieve 200 by 200 dpi and requires about twice the transmission time. Fine resolution also approximately doubles the time required to transmit a fax page because it doubles the data that must be moved.

Revisions to the Group 3 standard have added more possible resolutions. Two new resolutions compensate for the slight elongation that creeps into fax documents when generated and transmitted in purely electronic form. New fax products may optionally send and receive at resolutions of 204 by 98 pixels per inch in standard mode or 204 by 196 pixels per inch in fine mode. Two new high-resolution modes of 300 by 300 pixels per inch and 400 by 400 pixels per inch were also established. The 300 by 300 mode enables fax machines, laser printers, and scanners to share the same resolution levels for higher quality when transferring images between them. To take advantage of these resolutions, both sending and receiving fax equipment must support the new modes.

Data Rates

The basic speed of a Group 3 fax transmission depends on the underlying communications standard that the fax product follows. These standards are similar to data modem standards. With the exception of V.34, data and fax modems operate under different standards, even when using the same data rates. Consequently, data and fax modems are not interchangeable, and a modem that provides high-speed fax capabilities (say, 9600 bps) may operate more slowly in data mode (say, 2400 bps).

The Group 3 protocol does not define a single speed for fax transmissions but allows the use of any of a variety of transmission standards. At data rates of 2400 and 4800 bits per second, fax modems operate under the V.27 ter standard (note that ter stands for tertiary). At 7200 and 9600 bits per second, they follow V.29 (or V.17, which incorporates these V.29 modes). At 12,000 and 14,400 bits per second, fax modems follow V.17. The V.34 standard will take both fax and data modems up to 28,800 bits per second. New standards will allow the use of the Group 3 fax protocol over ISDN and other future digital telephone services.

Fax modems are typically described by the communications standards they support or by the maximum data rate at which they can operate. Most modern fax modems follow the V.17 standard, which incorporates the lower V.29 speeds. Most will also fall back to V.27 ter to accommodate older, slower fax products.

Compression

In a typical fax machine, you slide a page into the machine, place the call, and the machine calls a distant number. Once the connection is negotiated, the fax machine scans the page with a photodetector inside the machine, which detects the black and white patterns on the page one line at a time at a resolution of 200 dots per inch. The result is a series of bits with the digital ones (1) and zeros (0) corresponding to the black and white samples each 1/200th of an inch. The fax machine compresses this raw data stream to increase the apparent data rate and shorten transmission times.

Data compression makes the true speed of transmitting a page dependent on the amount of detail that each page contains. In operation, the data-compression algorithm reduces the amount of data that must be transferred by a factor of five to ten. On the other hand, a bad phone connection can slow fax transmissions, as fax modems automatically fall back to lower speeds to cope with poor line quality.

Group 3 fax products may use any of three levels of data compression, designated as MH, MR, and MMR. The typical Group 3 fax product includes only MH compression. The others are optional, and MMR is particularly rare. To be sure that a given fax product uses MR or MMR, you will need to check its specifications.

MH stands for Modified Huffman encoding, which is also known as one-dimensional encoding. MH was built in to the Group 3 standard in 1980 so that a fax machine could send a full page in less than one minute using a standard V.27 ter modem that operated at 4800 bits per second. With 9600 bps modems, that time is cut nearly in half.

MR, or Modified Read encoding, was added as an option shortly after MH encoding was adopted. MR starts with standard MH encoding for the first line of the transmission but then encodes the second line as differences from the first line. Because with fine images, line data changes little between adjacent lines, usually little change in information is required. To prevent errors from rippling through an entire document, at the third line, MR starts over with a plain MH scan. In other words, odd-numbered scan lines are MH and even lines contain only difference information from the previous line. If a full line is lost in transmission, MR limits the damage to, at most, two lines. Overall, the transmission time savings in advancing from MH to MR amounts to 15 to 20 percent, the exact figure depending on message contents.

MMR, or Modified Modified Read encoding, foregoes the safety of the MR technique and records the entire page as difference data. Using MMR, the first line serves as a reference and is all white. Every subsequent line is encoded as the difference from the preceding line until the end of a page. However, an error in any one line will repeat in every subsequent line, so losing one line can garble an entire page. To help prevent such problems, MMR can incorporate its own error-correction mode (ECM) through which the receiving fax system can request the retransmission of any lines received in error. Only the bad lines are updated, and the rest of the page is reconstructed from the new data. MMR with ECM is the most efficient scheme used for compressing fax transmissions and can cut the time needed for a page transmission with MH in half.

Instead of individual dots, under MH (and therefore MR and MMR) the bit-pattern of each scan line on the page is coded as short line segments, and the code indicates the number of dots in each segment. The fax machine sends this run-length coded data to the remote fax machine. Included in the transmitted signal is a rudimentary form of error protection, but missed bits are not reproduced when the receiving fax machine reconstructs the original page.

The exact code used by MH under Group 3 fax uses four code groups—two for sequences of white dots and two for sequences of black dots. Sequences from 0 to 63 dots long are coded using terminating codes, which express the exact number of dots of the given color in the segment. If the segment of like-color dots scanned from the paper is longer than 63 dots, MH codes it as two code groups—a terminating code and a make-up code. The make-up code value indicates the number of 64-dot blocks in the single-color segment.

Binary File Transfer

More than just following the same modem standard, the capabilities of fax service are merging with those of standard data communications. New fax modems, for example, incorporate Binary File Transfer (BFT) capabilities, which enable them to ship BFT files from one fax system to another as easily as document pages. You could, for example, send a file from your computer to a printer for a remote printout or to a computer where it could be received automatically. The receiving fax modem picks up the line, makes the connection, and records the file as dutifully as it would an ordinary fax page—without anyone standing around to control the modem.

Group 4

In 1984, the CCITT approved a super-performance facsimile standard called Group 4, which allows resolutions of up to 400 by 400 dpi as well as higher-speed transmissions of lower resolutions. Although not quite typeset quality (phototypesetters are capable of resolutions of about 1200 dpi), the best of Group 4 is about equal to the resolving capability of the human eye at normal reading distance. However, today’s Group 4 fax machines require high-speed dedicated lines and do not operate as dial-up devices. Group 3 equipment using new, higher-resolution standards and coupled to digital services offers a lower-cost alternative to Group 4.

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The first fax machines looked much like current models only bigger—and usually smellier. Each had a telephone handset and a touch-tone keypad for dialing a distant machine. Each had a slot to slide in documents and another where received pages slid out, often a bit damp from the primitive chemical-based printing technology. Today, the fax machine combines several other office functions—a fax modem with a scanner, printer, and telephone set—that would tempt you to tie in your computer, but the standalone fax machine puts all its goodies out of the reach of your computer and its applications.

Today, standalone fax machines survive because, compared to computers, they are easier to use—they have no need for the hassle of clicking through windows or even booting up a computer to simply dial the telephone. Moreover, most fax machines are designed as—and perceived as by office workers—ordinary business machines, nothing so exotic or esoteric as a computer. They are seen more as a telephone with a paper slot than a brain-draining thinking machine. Even unskilled office workers are unfazed by a standalone fax machine.

A document whisking its way across the country is nothing more than digital data. Once that simple fact registered on computer engineers, they figured out ways of linking that data with the day’s best data manipulator—the personal computer. The solution was the fax modem. Briefly, a small industry flourished making modems that could give your computer fax capabilities. Then the technology went mainstream, and the fax modem became a de rigueur part of every computer.

Fax machine–makers got another idea that they could give you the best of both worlds with standalone fax machines that accepted data such as telephone lists through a cable connection with your computer. Modern technology has done those simple connections one better—maybe four better. Multifunction printers often start with an ordinary fax machine but give your computer direct access to individual fax functions. The one multifunction printer can also serve as both a printer and a scanner for your computer—at least if you don’t demand graphic arts-quality scanning. Or you can slide a sheet of paper in, press a button, and have a digital copier. At a more mundane level, you can pick up the receiver and use the multifunction printer as an ordinary telephone. One manufacturer has even added an answering machine to its fax printers.

Modems
In the computer realm, the term fax modem means an expansion board that slides into a vacant slot inside your computer to give it the capability of sending and receiving fax transmissions. Although at one time it took a specialized product to handle faxes, even the least expensive of modern modems include fax capabilities.

The fax modem converts rasterized documents and page scans into a form compatible with the international telephone system. Nearly every high-speed modem sold today has built-in fax capabilities. This bonus results from the huge demand for fax in the business world, coupled with the trivial cost of adding fax capabilities to chips used to build modern modems. Everything that’s necessary for fax comes built in to the same chipsets that make normal high-speed modem communications possible.

Multifunction Printers

The fax sections of multifunction printers are little more than ordinary standalone fax machines. Nearly all commercial products use the same chipsets as fax modems. They differ chiefly in the capability of their standalone functions: how many numbers they remember and organize.

The printer sections of multifunction machines vary widely, nearly as widely as ordinary printer technology. The least expensive multifunction machines use inkjet printers. Although at one time the bargain-basement machines got away with including only monochrome printing, nearly all inkjet-based multifunction printers now have color capabilities. That doesn’t mean the machines can send and receive color images. The color serves only the computer printer function, so you have the full spectrum available to you when want you want to print, for example, a page from the Web.

Nothing precludes a multifunction printer from using other technologies, and a few more expensive machines do use laser engines. You get all the advantages of a laser printer—fast, sharp images on plain paper—along with the ability to send fax directly from the printer or through your computer. As with other general-purpose laser printers, you’re restricted to monochrome printing, both for fax and general computer output. (No manufacturer has adapted color laser technology to fax printing.) Fax standards limit the resolution of documents received by fax to 200 dots per inch. Scans and copies are limited by the resolution of the scanner section. Output from your computer, however, prints at the hardware resolution of the print engine.

Most multifunction printers use drum scanner technology. It is less expensive to move paper than it is to move an internal scanner. Drum technology also permits more compact machines and makes adding document feeders for multipage faxes much easier. A few multifunction printers use flatbed scanners. Although these are not as useful for faxing (document feeders for them are expensive add-ons), they add versatility to the scanning function. As with other flatbeds, they allow the use of small and odd-shaped documents as well as three-dimensional objects (such as books) that would be off limits to a drum scanner.

The scanners in multifunction printers are optimized for fax use and do not pretend to compete with dedicated scanners for producing high-quality graphics. They often have limited resolution (some as low as 200 dpi), limited dynamic range, and sometimes no color capabilities at all. Fax doesn’t need color. The output is, however, sufficient for document processing and works well with OCR software on your computer.

To make copies, the multifunction printer manufacturers simply link the fax scanner to the printer. The connection is indirect, detouring through the microprocessor and memory, a scenic route that adds versatility. You can make multiple copies (up to 99 on each machine) and, with most machines, alter the size of the image. On the downside, quality is limited by scanner resolution (no chance of counterfeiting $20 bills with a multifunction machine), and speed is constrained by processing and the printer engine. Some machines take nearly a minute to copy a single page, although speeds are increasing.

In a classic fax system, you start using fax by dialing up a distant fax system using a touch pad on your fax machine, just as you would any other telephone. You slide a sheet of paper into the fax’s scanner, and the page curls around a drum in front of a photodetector. Much as a television picture is broken into numerous scan lines, a fax machine scans images as a series of lines, takes them one at a time, and strings all of the lines scanned from the document into a continuous stream of information. The fax machine converts the data stream into a series of modulated tones for transmission over the telephone line. After a connection is made at the receiving end, another fax machine converts the data stream into black and white dots representing the original image, much as a television set reconstructs a TV image. A printer puts the results on paper using either thermal or laser printer technology.

Computer-based fax systems can do away with the paper. Fax software can take the all-electronic images you draw or paint with your graphics software and convert them into the standard format that’s used for fax transmissions. A fax modem in your computer can then send that data to a standard fax machine, which converts the data into hard-copy form. Alternatively, your computer fax system can receive a transmission from a standard fax machine and capture the image into a graphics file. You can then convert the file into another graphic format using conversion software, edit the image with your favorite painting program, or turn its text contents into ASCII form using optical character recognition (OCR) software. You can even turn your computer into the equivalent of a standard fax machine by adding a scanner to capture images from paper. Your printer will turn fax reception into hard copy, although at a fraction of the speed of a standalone fax machine.

Computer-based fax beats standalone fax with its management capabilities. Computer fax software can broadcast fax messages to as wide a mailing list as you can accommodate on your hard disk, waiting until early morning hours when long-distance rates are cheapest to make the calls. You can easily manage the mailing list as you would any other computer database.

The concept of facsimile transmissions is not new. As early as 1842, Alexander Bain patented an electromechanical device that could translate wire-based signals into marks on paper. Newspaper wire photos, which are based on the same principles, have been used for generations.

I was surfing the other day and I stumbled upon a site that might interest all homebuyers. If you are interested in purchasing Las Vegas real estate, this site would gainfully cater to your needs. Properties in Las Vegas Homes ranges from medium costs homes all the way to luxury homes.

Las Vegas Homes features a detailed search for New Homes, Resale Homes, Highrise Condos and Rentals. If you do not want to search with the categories as above, you can alternatively browse cities such as Las Vegas, Henderson, Boulder City, Mesquite, Pahrump, North Las Vegas and Mount Charleston. Each of those categories as mentioned above can be further divided into communities such as Aliante, Anthem, Painted Desert, Peccole Ranch, Summerlin, Sunset Village, The Lakes and other communities. I would say that this is the most detailed site on the Internet for homes in Las Vegas. As if those mentioned are not enough, Las Vegas Homes contains even foreclosure properties to choose from. Foreclosures are categorized in HUD, VA and Bank Repos properties.

For each property that you click on, Las Vegas Homes features a content rich explanation of it. Look at a sample of a property located in Henderson for example. It has a feature section where the general details of the property is stated. However, further to that, you can see that this page has details such as building description, rooms description and even other description that includes pools, spa, heating, energy and even refrigerators! In the room description, each and every rooms is fully details from ceiling fans to walk in closets.

Not to forget, Las Vegas Homes does come with a Knowledge Centre where you could obtain all information regarding properties and investment. For instance, there is a page that explains Las Vegas property appreciation. You could alternatively read about how to make you home ready, information for first time house buyers, Las Vegas Blog, Real Estate Glossary, see some Las Vegas Photos and even an Airport Noise Map!

If you want to have more information for a property featured in Las Vegas Homes, there is a list of Las Vegas real estate agents on the main page. You could either e-mail them or just drop them a line. Finally, for those who are interested to take up the challenge of becoming a real estate agent, there is a career opportunity page for you to apply.

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