Study: SMBs favour fax machines over laptops

Fax machines remain the most commonly used piece of technology for small and medium businesses.

This is according to a survey commissioned by Intel, which asked 3,000 SMBs with fewer than 250 employees about how they use technology.

Fax machines are still used by four out of ten IT users in SMBs, while 36% use laptops, 16% use smartphones, and only 1.4% use tablets.

"Fax machines are old technology, but it's still something that ranks very highly among SMBs," Graham Palmer, managing director of Intel UK, said. "Why are people still using fax machines? Because it still works for them."

Nearly half of those asked said they don't adopt any new technology because they lack the money or staff to do so, while a third have no plans to upgrade PCs or other devices in the next year.

"When you're running an SMB you have a lot of different business priorities you're trying to juggle, and being an expert in IT isn't perhaps one of them," Palmer said.

However, 42% of those polled said they use their own devices for work, although Intel warned that only a third of businesses were aware of legislation regarding data privacy and security.

The majority of employees who do use their own kit - some seven out of ten - do so because of the "attractive design of the device" or because they "value the increased privacy of using their own laptop".

Cloud confusion

The survey also highlighted the continuing confusion over cloud computing, finding that half of people using Google Docs don't believe they use cloud services.

Half of IT users and a quarter of IT decision makers said they weren't entirely sure what cloud computing is - although it's easy to see why they're confused when Intel's own report cites Amazon and eBay as examples of cloud applications.

"When you spoke to people who said they weren't [using cloud computing], they were in fact using services that are deployed through cloud capabilities," Palmer said. "The sector is deploying these services, but they [SMBs] are not necessarily associating them with cloud services."

This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk