All-in-ones that come with their own fax modems can be really handy, especially if you do a lot of faxing, or if you receive faxes during off-hours. Because they have their own fax modems, they don't depend on the one in your computer to do the faxing for them. You simply connect the fax modem to your phone line, check the printer menu to make sure all your settings are as you want them, and you've got yourself a working fax machine.
However, like many tech devices, sometimes its the little things that trip you up. For example, let's say you have just aquired a Canon Pixma all-in-one, and you're about to connect your phone line to the fax modem. You look in back of the printer, and you see two ports into which you could connect your phone line. One has a picture of a phone next to it, and the other has the letter "L." Which do you pick?
If you said, "The one with the picture of the phone," you'd be wrong.
No matter how much research manufacturers do on the meaning of symbols, sometimes they get it wrong. In the case of this particular all-in-one, the picture of the phone indicates that if you want to connect your fax modem to an actual phone -- in case you also use that same line for calls -- you connect the phone to that port.
The "L" next to the other port stands for "Phone Line." In other words, that is where you connect the phone line that, in turn, connects into your main phone hookup in the wall.
"Oh, that's simple," I hear you say. "Who would make that mistake?" Plenty of people, actually. I know of two quite intelligent business people who made that very mistake -- and were very frustated when they couldn't get their faxes to work.
Of course, Canon isn't the only manufacturer who sometimes isn't as clear as they should be with their symbols. I've had other times when I stared at a port or a button on a printer, wondering what the heck that little picture next to it meant. (We won't even talk about the time I connected a phone line to an Ethernet port. Please.)
The moral of this story? If you set up your printer, scanner, or all-in-one, and it still doesn't work, check your connections. And double-check them. And then look in the manual -- because hopefully, that's where they will explain, in black-and-white text, the meaning of all those symbols.
