Alfa Systems Ltd has launched a desktop machine for transmitting data disk-to-disk via telephone lines, in the same way that a facsimile machine transmits paper-based information. Alfa says the Diskfax is aimed at filling what it sees as the yawning gap between personal computer and personal computer-related products and fax. To use the machine, the user’s floppy disk – 5.25 or 3.5 – is loaded in the machine, the user dials the receiving machine and the data is then transmitted using facsimile technology from the sending disk to a receiving one at the other end. The disk size at either end is immaterial, but a clean disk must be used at both ends. Files cannot be formatted – the machine automatically sends all the data on the disk – and, with the floppy disk version, the data will not transmit if the disk at the receiving end already has any information on it. There is a hard disk model which can store several intakes of data, but the floppy model has to be humanly monitored at the reception end and a clean diskette entered each time. Both models use proprietary Alfa protocols and have a data transmission rate of 9,600 bits per second. The hard disk model can be connected to a personal computer via a serial interface for hard disk-to-hard disk connections. Alfa, based in Stratford, London, says the machine is not intended to compete head on with modems, electronic mail, networks and faxcards but is a complementary technology to make electronic communications fast and easy for non communications experts. It is aimed at people who are either not connected up to networks or do not have electronic mail facilities, or those that do have them and are unable to work them – the sort of people that send floppy disks around by post and courier. Initially, Alfa will target the internal corporate data communications market, but Alfa’s sales and marketing director Nick Godridge eventually hopes to market and sell the machine in the same way that facsimile machines are sold and to have sold 25,000 globally within the next four years. Diskfax costs UKP1,000 for the floppy disk model, UKP1,500 for the hard disk model.
