The "slow windows on a desktop" of grass roots VTF has some major advantages:

1. Testing: FAXes and phones provides a way to test the premises of visual telefacilitation right now, without waiting for expensive hardware or software to be developed.

2. Deployment: FAXes and phones insures the immediate deliverability of more effective teleconferencing to the greatest number of people. This grass roots availability of visual telefacilitation is very important. Groups with access to paper FAXes and telephones number in the hundreds of millions; groups with access to all other teleconferencing media combined number only in the low millions at best.

3. Benchmarking: FAXes and phones will provide a very cost-effective reference point against which to measure the more sophisticated and expensive equipment systems.

4. Upward Compatability: FAXes and phones, when implemented using FAX modems and FAX software on PC's, utilizes FAX as a grass roots computer graphics interchange format      and it interleaves seemlessly with paper FAX technology. This means that in the same visually facilitated teleconference some of the participants can be using paper FAX windows while other participants are seeing the meeting record on faster and more flexible computer displays. It also means the telefacilitator can use any word or graphics processor the output of which can be sent as a FAX (either directly, or printed onto paper and then scanned). Another nice upward compatibility is the optional use of overhead projectors at any site to increase viewing access of the subgroup to the pages of the meeting record (either paper FAX onto acetate, or LCD pannel for computer display of FAX contents).