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The problem for this use case is that certain businesses, like medical offices, use specialized software that is often Windows only.
by macco 1y ago
The problem for this use case is that certain businesses, like medical offices, use specialized software that is often Windows only.
- Beretta_Vexee 1y agoMore and more of this software is moving to the cloud and only requires a web browser. A distribution that is very difficult to break and can launch a web browser would already meet many use cases for receptionists, hotels, consultation stations, etc.
- bb88 1y agoYes, but doctors offices are still the last places in the US to use a fax machine.
- alex_suzuki 1y agoNot just in the US, they‘re surprisingly popular still here in Switzerland. I‘ve written interfaces to fax gateways (convert incoming fax to pdf, extract metadata, save in DB) multiple times.
- Beretta_Vexee 1y agoThe United States is not the only country in the world. In France, it is almost impossible to make an appointment without using Doctolib, which is SaaS software for booking consultations (and lots of other things).
- Hendrikto 1y agoSame in Germany. Doctolib got popular very quickly, in just a fee years. Now it’s almost mandatory. I am not a fan. It’s a big outage waiting to happen. It’s an enormous data breach waiting to happen. It will inevitable be enshitified.
- triknomeister 1y agoDoctolib is not the problem at all. he real problem is the lack of government proactivity on these initiatives. If the government had already thought about this in advanced (even in 2013 when doctolib was just starting out), then there could be very strong protectiosn for data which would then allay all of these concerns, and we might have had multiple players in this space. The best use of Doctolib for me is that I can make appointments without having to speak perfect German on phone. I can make appointments in evening when I'm back from office and can relax a little bit. So, doctolib is a godsend for me as an immigrant here. and I'm guessing for a lot of people too. I can look up doctors who are available without having to bother the receptionist. This is much more efficient way of doing things.
- skeezyboy 1y ago> It will inevitable be enshitified. that only happens with the western venture capitalist model in private companies. doctolib makers already have income from all these government contracts instead of just relying on adverts and hype
- Beretta_Vexee 1y agoDoctolib is a B2B model. Patients are not the customers; medical practices are the customers. Doctolib saves on the cost of a medical secretary, which is why it is so popular. What's more, this is a sensitive and regulated field, where trust is essential. They can't afford to mess around if they don't want to quickly find themselves subject to moe restrictive regulations. They were heavily criticised in France because they allowed charlatans and people with no medical training to register (particularly for Botox injections). As soon as this became known, they quickly rectified the situation.
- dotancohen 1y agoThe fax protocol provides a real-time recipient receipt. Email doesn't. Seriously. That's the reason that fax is still popular in the medical industry.
- const_cast 1y agoAlso the limitations of fax sort of end up being it's differentiator to email and it's biggest advantage. Not needing an email server is a big boon, not really being susceptible to phishing is a boon, and with modern fax over internet it's virtually indistinguishable in user experience from email.
- dotancohen 1y agoI remember fax phishing even before I had ever heard of email. From many large companies, simply paying a sub $100 invoice was standard procedure without even checking with the other internal bodies.
- const_cast 1y agoThis is true, but it's much less of a concern because: 1. You get way less faxes than emails. 2. Faxes can't steal credentials. 3. You should be auditing expenses anyway.
- sabas_ge 1y agoIf only a standard existed to do this... Hint: it exists since ages in Italy and it has been extended to Europe recently (See Registered Electronic Mail - RFC 6109 and ETSI EN 319 532 – 4)
- kensai 1y agoGermany here. Fax is king.
- Wowfunhappy 1y agoIn that case, wouldn't ChromeOS actually make the most sense?
- Loic 1y agoBecause ChromeOS is not an open base?
- lproven 1y agoIt is. https://opensource.google/projects/chromiumos https://opensource.google/projects/chromiumos https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/ https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/
- Beretta_Vexee 1y agoBecause Chrome OS is offered on low-cost laptops that are unsuitable for office work. What's more, it's Google, so we're not safe from a ‘Lol, we're discontinuing support for Chrome OS. Good luck, Byeeee.’. Some offices still have bad memories of Google Cloud Print, for example. I'm not saying that being an early adopter of a distribution that's less than a year old is a good solution. Just that Google's business products don't have a very good reputation.
- lproven 1y ago> Because Chrome OS is offered on low-cost laptops that are unsuitable for office work. ChromeOS Flex exists, it is free of charge, and it runs on more or less any x86-64 computer, including Intel Macs. Nordic Choice got hit with ransomeware and rather than paying, just reformatted most of its client PCs with ChromeOS Flex and kept going with cloud services. https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/nordic-choice-hotels-turns-ransomware-attack-into-success-story https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/nordic...
- Wowfunhappy 1y agoBusinesses seem okay using Google Chrome, Google Drive/Docs, and Gmail.
- inquirerGeneral 1y ago[dead]
- mschuster91 1y agoWine/Proton gets better every day though.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoDoctors have better things to do that learn Linux and Wine. Their office buys their stuff from a supplier which ships them a Windows box with all the batteries included.
- mschuster91 1y agoWine makes for zero difference in how the application looks and behaves, that's the point.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoAre you working as a doctor? Or do you work in tech?
- mschuster91 1y agoI happen to have started my career doing IT support for doctors and veterinarians...
- akk0 1y agoAre you a doctor?
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoYou don't need a medical degree to have logic and common sense takes on the observed use of PCs by doctors around which I spend a lot of time around. That's why doctors in my country still prefer legacy physical pen and paperwork, versus interactions with the modern digitized equivalents which are universally hated because they're not designed by doctors but by some consultancy who won the government tender. Adding dealing with an unfamiliar OS and Wine on top of that is not the slam dunk you think it is.
- tsoukase 1y agoMy medical devices run Windows due to specialised software. But at my medical office PC I use Linux: EMR and receipts through a web app on browser (locally hosted but it can be cloud), LibreOffice, Weasis Dicom etc