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back to article The paperless office? Don’t talk sheet

A report has arrived in my email inbox, claiming to provide information on “the paperless office”. Instinctively, I check the calendar. No, it isn’t 1985. Perhaps I misread the subject line? Nope. There it is: “the paperless office”. Ah bless. I’ve heard people talking about the concept of office work without paper since my …

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  1. Andy A

    It's not me, it's everybody else

    I try to stay "paperless", and read virtually everything on one screen or another. I'm not one of the younger generation. This year I clock up 40 years of working in IT. It's not that I don't know how to print stuff, it's just that I'm too lazy to cart all that heavy paper around.

    I know that if I have to use my inkjet printer I will need to spend a couple of hours cleaning up the ink path to get anything legible. There's a cheap b&w laser somewhere in the garage which would probably be more productive.

    But everyone else I meet seems to insist on hard copy. My employer even likes documents of the print-it-out-and-sign-it-and-fax-it-back variety - hardly good for the forests.

    My genealogy research is in a specialised database and a host of image files. Other people demand a filing cabinet. I transcribe old documents directly into my database while others transcribe onto a rough copy in pencil (no pens allowed in Record Offices) and then transcribe that again later for storage.

    Anyone know why most people are addicted to paper?

    3 0 Reply
    1. GrumpenKraut
      Reply Icon

      Re: It's not me, it's everybody else

      > Anyone know why most people are addicted to paper?

      Paper has an awesome user interface (seriously).

      Icon is a blank sheet of paper. ---------------->

      18 0 Reply
      1. Mark 85
        Reply Icon

        Re: It's not me, it's everybody else

        Indeed. Plus, by now almost everyone knows that the trees for paper come from tree farms that grow them, not from the wild forests. So, there's less guilt.

        I've also noticed that more people are not using "recycled" paper as a) it's seldom that eye-pleasing bright white and b) there's not much generated in the way of dioxins after the dioxin scares of the last century.

        FTR, I'm about 90% paperless at home compared to say 10-15 years ago. At work... meh... no such luck.

        2 0 Reply
    2. Toltec
      Reply Icon

      Re: It's not me, it's everybody else

      "But everyone else I meet seems to insist on hard copy. My employer even likes documents of the print-it-out-and-sign-it-and-fax-it-back variety - hardly good for the forests."

      Had one of those the other day, I printed the one page of eleven that had to be signed, took a photo of the signed section, uploaded the photo to my PC and cleaned up the image, pasted the image into the original word doc, then finally printed it as a PDF and emailed it back. Mainly because I couldn't be bothered to work out how to make the company, network connected, scanner send me a copy of a scan though rather than to save the paper.

      2 0 Reply
      1. Triggerfish
        Reply Icon

        Re: It's not me, it's everybody else

        Not only is it an awesome interface. But it's great for drawing giant teddy bears destroying Tokyo...I mean taking notes. Don't think the PM was amused but it does give the hint his meeting was pointless.

        6 0 Reply
    3. Innocent-Bystander*
      Reply Icon

      Re: It's not me, it's everybody else

      Anyone know why most people are addicted to paper?

      Ain't nothing like the feel of a nice quality pen on heavy bright paper.

      Reading on paper also has a more "substantial" feel to it. Like it triggers your brain that whatever you're reading is more important to commit to memory than everyday Internet claptrap.

      Or maybe I'm just old and hold online content in complete contempt.

      4 0 Reply
      1. x 7
        Reply Icon

        Re: It's not me, it's everybody else

        "Anyone know why most people are addicted to paper?"

        no, no, no.....people are addicted to whats rolled in the paper

        1 0 Reply
  2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Just popped back to say

    Dabbsy, thanks for the link to your 1999 Adobe column! Good read! And of course I'll steal some of the examples.

    3 0 Reply
  3. x 7

    I don't understand why your mobile phones can't print.......no problems on my Androids. Easy for anyone who thinks about it

    1 3 Reply
    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      It's almost like he was being sarcastic, and you didn't pick up on it, but that can't be the case right?

      12 0 Reply
      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        "It's almost like he was being sarcastic"

        As if the fact that it was Dabsy wasn't a big enough hint.

        2 0 Reply
    2. Luiz Abdala
      Reply Icon
      Windows

      Mobile Phones???? Try a PS3!

      My Playstation 3 found my Epson Printer over the network at home! I found out that I can print HTML pages and photos straight from my PC right into the printer using the freaking PS3.

      I knew my webcam and my keyboard could work on the PS3 (and the webcam works without the freaking windows driver, no less!) but not the printer over WiFi.

      1 0 Reply
  4. Alistair Dabbs

    Digital signatures

    Reading these comments, I was reminded of an occasion when Adobe asked me to sign a legal agreement which they emailed to me. I duly added my digital signature using Acrobat and emailed it back.

    Without a beat, I received a reply from Adobe to say they were unable to accept digitally signed PDFs and would I please print it out, sign it with a real pen and post the sheets of paper back to them.

    Talk about a lack of faith in your own product... except I think it had more to do with the US legal system still lingering in the 18th century (guns! guns! guns!) than Adobe itself not trusting users to work with digital sigs.

    21 1 Reply
  5. Kubla Cant

    Contracts etc

    Once upon a time you could start a new contract with a minimum of paperwork and fuss. These days, I'm emailed about 50 pages of contracts, NDAs, declarations and affirmations by the client, the agency, and often some Stasi-like company that does background checks. All these have to be printed, signed (usually on one page out of the 10 I've printed), scanned and emailed back. So I'm left with a thick wad of paper that may be important in some way, and therefore can't be thrown away.

    Sometimes I'm tempted to short-cut the process by editing a scanned signature into a document then exporting it direct to PDF, but I'm haunted by the possibility that I'll be accused of "not really signing".

    5 0 Reply
    1. Tom 7
      Reply Icon

      Re: Contracts etc

      I love it when people send me PDF contracts to sign. I normally edit it so it doesnt mean what they think it does and then print and send it back. They never notice until things start to go wrong.

      16 1 Reply
  6. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Holmes

    As any fule kno...

    It's impossible to proofread an important document on-screen as the letters rearrange themselves into the final typo-riddled version only upon printing.

    22 0 Reply
    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: As any fule kno...

      That olsa happens to elReg pasts.

      2 0 Reply
  7. Triggerfish

    The removed the post it notes from our office

    Within two days everyone had brought their own in.

    5 0 Reply
    1. Andy A
      Reply Icon

      Re: The removed the post it notes from our office

      What sort of reverse-logic world are you living in?

      Here, any post-it note pads left lying around disappear within 24 hours. It's been like this wherever I've worked.

      No, it's not me, honest.

      9 0 Reply
      1. Triggerfish
        Reply Icon

        Re: The removed the post it notes from our office

        To clarify our employers removed the post it notes and banned them being ordered for stationery, luckily everyone could restock from home stocks, that had been previously fed by an unlocked stationery cupboard so it all sorta came round.

        No one nicks my post it notes, I used to work in a drawing office. Come near my stationery at your peril, and don't even think of looking at my Rotring pens. :)

        8 0 Reply
        1. AbelSoul
          Reply Icon
          Thumb Up

          Re: and don't even think of looking at my Rotring pens

          Now those were proper drawing instruments.

          I still have a collection of them from my just-out-of-school draughtsman days.

          Every single one of them has my initials plastered all over it to deter any would be clepto-colleagues.

          6 0 Reply
          1. Ali Um Bongo
            Reply Icon
            FAIL

            Re: and don't even think of looking at my Rotring pens

            *"...Now those were proper drawing instruments...."*

            Rotring pens are for pansies. Real artists use a dip pen and a bottle of Indian Ink

            0 0 Reply
            1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
              Reply Icon

              Re: and don't even think of looking at my Rotring pens

              Oh, lah-di-dah... - we used to dream about having a dip pen and a bottle of ink! Best we could manage was a twig with some of granddad's nostril hairs tied to it, and don't even get me started on the ink!

              2 0 Reply
              1. Triggerfish
                Reply Icon

                Re: and don't even think of looking at my Rotring pens

                I used to mix lamp black from the ashes of my forefathers and climb mountains for Eagle feathers, you all have it to easy.

                1 0 Reply

          2. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: The removed the post it notes from our office

          "don't even think of looking at my Rotring pens"

          On pain of getting one stuck into the back of the hand?

          2 0 Reply
          1. Triggerfish
            Reply Icon

            Re: The removed the post it notes from our office

            Never stick a pen like that in soeones hand the 0.13 nib can't take it. Use the craft knife you have for pencil sharpening instead.

            0 0 Reply
  8. GlenP Silver badge

    I'm old enough to remember the launch of the ICL Perq in the early eighties, which was accompanied by a lot of "Paperless Office is here" advertising. Think it had a high resolution monochrome portrait screen that they claimed was "as good as reading paper".

    At about the same time we'd just got some DEC LN03 laser printers and some word processing software so started to type our own letters, which we were then obliged to send to the typing pool so they could retype them on their IBM Golfball typewriters before sending them back to us for signing. It was the Civil Service!

    3 0 Reply
    1. BebopWeBop
      Reply Icon

      I remember the Perq - a lovely screen - for the time anyway. I also had the Apple A4 (ish) monitor in front of me with a colour monitor to one side for visualisation. A very nice combination for 25 odd years ago.

      2 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      "retype them on their IBM Golfball typewriters before sending them back to us for signing."

      I guess that at that time the security services had the footprints of every IBM golfball, but hadn't yet caught up with how laser printers identify their output (or knew that they do). So for internal security reasons using known golfballs would make sense. You didn't think they trusted you, did you?

      3 0 Reply
    3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      At about the same time we'd just got some DEC LN03 laser printers

      I remember them. Worked great on the DEC paper, but our office went on a 'green' kick and bought boxes of made-from-recycled paper. The LN03s all started to jam within a few weeks, leading to new rollers & a warning from DEC not to use anything but their paper. Always seemed like clever design to me, and a trick that HP obviously missed.

      2 0 Reply
      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
        Reply Icon

        Looks like someone at DEC remembered IBM and their punch cards (for the Hollerith-type sorting machines).

        0 0 Reply
      2. Down not across
        Reply Icon

        Laser printers can be picky about the paper

        I remember them. Worked great on the DEC paper, but our office went on a 'green' kick and bought boxes of made-from-recycled paper. The LN03s all started to jam within a few weeks, leading to new rollers & a warning from DEC not to use anything but their paper. Always seemed like clever design to me, and a trick that HP obviously missed.

        Well, the printer is not going to know what brand paper there is.

        However laser printers can be picky about the paper. Some less smooth paper may have issues with toner affixing properly and it does not all always collect nicely in the waste reservoir. Likewise some paper leave more paper dust behind than others which then affects rollers and paper guides

        Given that I have mostly used old second hand printers at home, I've long ago learnt that trying to skimp on paper does not pay off, but results in pain having to clean the printer, clean the rollers (and eventually get new rollers).

        0 0 Reply
    4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      "started to type our own letters, which we were then obliged to send to the typing pool so they could retype them on their IBM Golfball typewriters before sending them back to us for signing."

      I had the same experience writing witness statements. We called it getting typos inserted. Although given that there were four different types of stationery it would have been difficult to handle in the days of single tray lasers. The "word processor" was the USCD Pascal editor...

      0 0 Reply
  9. Spanners Silver badge
    Facepalm

    College Quote

    "Ladies and gentlemen, by the time (some of) you graduate, the paperless office will have become the norm."

    That was from my induction lecture - in autumn 1979!

    I have and it hasn't...

    4 0 Reply
  10. Potemkine Silver badge
    Pirate

    This column has only one purpose:

    To satisfy the obscene tastes of Mr Dabbs regarding music and to throw online another link to a video clip imported from the 80s with people with strange dead animals on the head trying to make us believe they actually know how to play instruments they jiggle with.

    3 0 Reply
    1. Alistair Dabbs
      Reply Icon

      Re: This column has only one purpose:

      This is the first time I've heard Jaz's hair being referred to as a "dead animal".

      1 0 Reply
    2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
      Reply Icon

      Re: This column has only one purpose:

      What are you, under forty? Get off of my lawn!

      Mr. Dabbs' taste in music is impeccable.

      1 0 Reply
  11. Duncan Macdonald

    The Paperless Office

    Is one where they have managed to run out of paper for the printers :-)

    5 0 Reply
    1. Joe 37
      Reply Icon

      Re: The Paperless Office

      Someone I worked with used to work with a financial services company. They had just employed a lad to come in in the middle of the night to refill the printers as the daily 3,500 page report apparently had to be printed. Every freaking single day!

      Don't know about you folks but I read extremely quickly and there is just no way I could read that much in any 24 hour period. Let alone every 24 hour period.

      0 0 Reply
  12. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    In that Adobe article you may be right about print and other issue, but you were wholly wrong about Western movies. They were already dead and buried when Eastwood and Leone made them - and those were just more nails on the Westerns coffin.... they were just the prequel of the silly, boastful action movies of today.

    0 4 Reply
    1. CliveS
      Reply Icon
      Flame

      re Don't talk sheet

      "...but you were wholly wrong about Western movies. They were already dead and buried when Eastwood and Leone made them"

      Let's see, A Fist Full of Dollars was '64 and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly was '66. Since then we've had (to name but a few):

      True Grit (1967)

      McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971)

      The Shootist (1976)

      Pale Rider (1985)

      Dances with Wolves (1990)

      Unforgiven (1992)

      Sweetgrass (2009)

      Django Unchained (2012)

      So I don't think "dead and buried" is particularly accurate...

      Icon for sitting round the campfire eating stew and beans

      6 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: re Don't talk sheet

        <quote>Icon for sitting round the campfire eating stew and beans</quote>

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXHkFZ-nG4Y

        0 0 Reply
      2. Zog_but_not_the_first
        Reply Icon
        Trollface

        Re: re Don't talk sheet

        "Icon for sitting round the campfire eating stew and beans"

        Ironic that you left out Blazing Saddles (1974)

        1 0 Reply
      3. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
        Reply Icon

        Re: re Don't talk sheet

        Silverado (1985), a personal favourite, mainly due to it's cast (what's not to like?).

        All genres have a variable popularity, it's a fashion thing, but they rarely ever die. The first movies ever made were Westerns (in the US at last, yes, I know - the Skladanowsky brothers, the Lumière brothers, Méliès, Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, etc.), The Great Train Robbery was shot in 1903 and is a Western. Given the potential of the format, Western movies will always be an option. Also, they can be transposed into other settings - Outland (1981) is arguably High Noon (1952) in space.

        0 0 Reply
  13. Semaj

    Print is Dead

    Hang on, when people say "print is dead" do they actually mean printing in an office context as well? Because if so then that's just silly.

    I always took the phrase to be referring to junk mail and stuff like that. Maybe magazines too (though personally I can't ever see paper newspapers disappearing completely, especially the local ones).

    1 0 Reply
    1. Mark 85
      Reply Icon

      Re: Print is Dead

      Nope... junk mail/catalogs are definitely alive. My wife and I do a lot of buying online and for some strange reason, we get 50 zillion catalogs all from online sellers as well as our inboxes filling up with them sending spam emails.

      As for magazines... yes, they're still around and come in the mail once a month.

      0 0 Reply
    2. Captain DaFt
      Reply Icon

      Re: Print is Dead

      "I always took the phrase to be referring to junk mail and stuff like that."

      Apparently Direct TV never got that memo. I have gotten as many as 15(!!) flyers a day from them via snail mail.

      1 0 Reply
    3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Print is Dead

      "Print is dead" is also a famous line from Ghostbusters, which, contra Alistair, came out in the mid 1980s, not the late 1990s. There it referred specifically to books.

      Ah, kids these days. Ignorant of the touchstones of their culture.

      0 0 Reply
  14. WylieCoyoteUK

    The paperless office.

    Apparently the best thing you can do to increase your printing costs is to install a document management system.

    Supposedly promoting paperless working, in general printing actually goes up, because users print out a document and read it, then discard it. This happens multiple times.

    By the way, printing from iPads, Iphones, Android, and even (shudder) Windows phones is pretty simple to set up actually, we do it all the time.

    1 0 Reply

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