Ever since the Internet stepped out of large business and into our homes it has always piggybacked onto our telephone lines. It was an easy choice with BT cables running to almost every house in the country and, for most of us, only used for very short periods of time as we chatted to friends. Over the years POTS, (Plain Old Telephone System), was beefed up to cope with the reliability requirements of an always-on network over which everyone wanted to go faster and faster. And as we all switched to mobile phones and email the telephone system became less

Printers have certainly evolved over the years from the early dot matrix type which produced barely legible text from an array of black dots to the multi colour photographic quality laser version which no longer need a mortgage to acquire. Along with the basic print quality changes printers now have a bewildering range of advanced features designed to make life easier if you can master the controlling process required. Things like double sided printing, copying and even faxing, (does anyone still do that??), are common place. Many of these features don’t even require a computer. Photocopying for instance is extremely