Sales of old steam fax machines have risen by as much as 25 percent during the postal strike, according to PC World.

Scanner sales have also be 20 percent up, apparently to allow people to send documents as email attachments rather than trusting to the post.

Niall O'Keeffe, marketing director at PC World, said: "We'd thought that faxes were heading for extinction with the advent of broadband, but the recent industrial action has caused us to think twice. The fax is a simple and reliable technology that can get messages across with a minimum of fuss."

Both sides in the postal strike have been accused of risking the Post Office's future by driving more business to email and other electronic communication.