Fax alternatives

[Steve Rindsberg]

I'm tired of my fax machine. I'm tired of feeding it ink carts, I'm tired of the miserable quality of the printouts, I'm tired of the occasional glitches visited upon me by the fax switch box I use (I find that the message waiting light on my phone and possibly Caller ID don't work because of it).

It all seems like a LOT of aggro for the number of faxes I receive ... other than the occasional overthetop contract, I probably don't get more than a dozen pages a year.

I've toyed with the idea of an internet faxing service for receiving faxes and wonder if anybody has any experience/recommendations with that. Groucho, you used to use one of these things, didn't you? Given the number of pages I get, it almost seems silly to pop even the ten bucks a month they ask.

I could always just ditch the machine and tell people to email me a PDF or scan or whatever. Worst case, I could, I suppose, set one of the XP boxes to receive the fax if there's no other way.

[ElyseC]

Is Jfax still around? I think that's what he used/uses. At one point I pointed one of my siblings to it and she set up an account, but less than a year later I discovered she wasn't using the service anymore and had bought a multifunction machine.

I'll see what I get via Google...

OK, got this set of search results and it looks like there are a number of services out there: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=jfax+%2B+fax+service&btnG=Google+Search

[scottleyes]

There are some really nice All-in-One printer/scanner/fax combos out there, and I seem to remember some of them having Fax-sense (ffilters faxes from "normal" calls. Problem is, they're getting harder to come by, as the FAX option is being dropped model-by-model. Fax really IS dead, it's just that we haven't had the collective heart/resolve to pull the plug and bury it.

[Stephen Owades]

I'm tired of my fax machine. I'm tired of feeding it ink carts, I'm tired of the miserable quality of the printouts, I'm tired of the occasional glitches visited upon me by the fax switch box I use (I find that the message waiting light on my phone and possibly Caller ID don't work because of it).

It all seems like a LOT of aggro for the number of faxes I receive ... other than the occasional overthetop contract, I probably don't get more than a dozen pages a year.

I've toyed with the idea of an internet faxing service for receiving faxes and wonder if anybody has any experience/recommendations with that. Groucho, you used to use one of these things, didn't you? Given the number of pages I get, it almost seems silly to pop even the ten bucks a month they ask.

I could always just ditch the machine and tell people to email me a PDF or scan or whatever. Worst case, I could, I suppose, set one of the XP boxes to receive the fax if there's no other way.
I use eFax (http://www.efax.com/), and have been reasonably happy with their service for several years. They used to forward incoming faxes only in a proprietary format, but now they offer the option of PDF, which works very well. (Of course, it's still an image, as any received fax must be.)

Their base-level service is free, as long as you're willing to accept a fax number that may not be in your area and don't receive more than a small number of faxes each month. I was on that plan for several years until a client foolishly sent me a lot of fax pages one month--they then told me that I had to switch to the paid plan or give up the service. I'm paying $140/year (a small discount from the $13/month rate).

Since I don't need a second phone line, the price seems worthwhile. I send faxes directly from my computer using my main phone line, and incoming faxes are forwarded to my email account and arrive via the broadband connection.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks!

eFax looks workable for my needs.

I've just done some further testing and found that indeed it WAS the old fax switch box that loused up Caller ID and MessageWaiting features. Thought about it all a bit more and disconnected it and the fax machine. I can use XP's fax receive/send feature for nearly everything I'd need to do here at the office. I might pick up some other fax software for when I'm away (my usual carry-with computer runs on Win2000, so no freebie fax software).

In the meanwhile, eFax should tide me over tidily. .

[Steve Rindsberg]

<g> It struck me that for the number of faxes I get in a year (the ones I *want* at any rate) I'd be better off paying for the Fedex charges to send 'em to me than buying new hardware and supplies.

[ElyseC]

There are some really nice All-in-One printer/scanner/fax combos out there, and I seem to remember some of them having Fax-sense (ffilters faxes from "normal" calls. Problem is, they're getting harder to come by, as the FAX option is being dropped model-by-model. Fax really IS dead, it's just that we haven't had the collective heart/resolve to pull the plug and bury it.Thankfully it was still very much alive six months ago when we were going through all sorts of durm and strang [sp?] selling our house. FedEx just wasn't fast enough!

That said, I can see eventually dropping our dedicated fax line eventually. I don't get that many faxes these days either. In fact, I think I've received only 1 in the five and a half months here in our new location. I have sent several, however, all of them to get various entities proof that, yes, we really did sell the house the date we said and, yes, we really do not live there anymore, nor hold any interest in that property. Geez, it sure takes a lot to convince insurance companies and government people of these things should they get it wrong in their systems! Don't know how we'd have done it with any efficiency without faxing.

[Jonathan]

That said, I can see eventually dropping our dedicated fax lineI've announced to all of my current clients that I am dropping my dedicated fax line (which I've maintained for 12 years) in April, and will be using my business voice line for incoming faxes after that. I just don't get enough faxes any more to justify the cost.

Like Steve, I've had bad experiences with gadgets that supposedly distinguish fax from voice calls. I won't go that route.

Which means that I must be here to accept faxes, unless someone warns me ahead of time, and I configure my fax softwaare to answer before the telephone's voicemail.

I'm encouraging my clients to email me PDFs instead, and I've been sending them out in lieu of faxing for the last year.

[ElyseC]

Other than selling the house last year, the two main uses for the fax has been 1) for one client to fax me a copy of the checks for my invoices along with the courier tracking information and 2) for that client's manufacturers to get me packaging artwork specs. Number 1 came about when one payment (happened to be a large one) never made it to me and seemed to have disappeared into the ether. We both decided anything of value had to be sent via trackable courier, especially when it had to cross oceans and numerous borders. Number 2 has lessened dramatically, because their current crop of suppliers have been providing the specs in electronic form (usually JPEG images and PDFs).

I don't know that I'm ready to let go of a physical fax, given how it saved the day multiple times last August and September. It would be nice, though, to save the cost of that line every month...

[terrie]

I love my littel fax Panasonic PC/Fax Store 80 which stores faxes and then I retrieve them via my pc...I don't fax all that often but do enough that I'll keep it and my 2nd phone line...

Terrie

[Steve Rindsberg]

Look at it this way: you can buy yourself a really NICE scanner with the money you save on the spare fax line.

[Steve Rindsberg]

[Later ... with shiny new eFax account in hand]

A few notes: the PDF option comes with one of the paid-for services; you have to pay for the free service by ignoring the ads and popups that wiggle around while you're viewing the proprietary image files in the software they supply - your only option. One pop-up per session .... it's a fair trade for the service I think. No complaints.

I also found what seems to be a nice, simple fax app for Win2000/XP - MightyFax. Free 30-day demo and if you like it, you have to shell out the grand sum of twenty bucks. And for this, they let you use it on both a desktop and a laptop. And they seem to understand that fax is a convenience, not an all-consuming lifestyle (thinking here about WinFax, which went WAY over the top almost ten years ago ... I hate to think what the current version must be like!)

[ElyseC]

Look at it this way: you can buy yourself a really NICE scanner with the money you save on the spare fax line.When it's time to replace my nice new Epson, yes. <g>

[Jonathan]

I don't know that I'm ready to let go of a physical fax, given how it saved the day multiple times last August and September. It would be nice, though, to save the cost of that line every month...I've never actually owned a standalone fax machine. For many years I used a Global Village modem with the fax software that came with it, which suited my purposes admirably. It (of course) used the same phone line as the modem did for my dialup connection to the Internet and CompuServe. When I put in a broadband (cable) connection, use of that line dropped off considerably.

Now I'm using the G5, which has a built-in modem and fax software right in the OS. The software is pretty weak compared to the GlobalFax software, and can't fax anything from the Classic layer (I still run PageMaker for one client). I tried PageSender at Ann's suggestion, and it's better, but still nowhere near what I had with the GV software.

When I shared these reasons with a client, by way of an explanation for dropping my dedicated fax line, she offered to buy me a standalone fax machine, which I declined...

[ElyseC]

I'm on my third hunk of fax hardware. This one's an HP multi-function. We got it to hook up to my husband's computer a couple of years ago, but found out it required an OS upgrade that just couldn't be done right then. Sooooo, it has performed admirably solely as a copy machine and fax, never as a scanner or printer. Oh wait...no, I did once try out its ability to read Compact Flash and Smart Media cards and printed a couple shots as a test.

[marlene]

Fax really IS dead

It ain't dead here. I get hundreds of pages faxed to me each month (sometimes a hundred pages in a single day) -- my clients mark up their proofs (which I send to them as e-mailed PDFs) and fax 'em back to me.

Although I'd be delighted if they would courier or FedEx the marked-up proofs instead, they aren't going to spend the extra money. And they usually need quick turnaround, so anything slower than overnight wouldn't work -- even overnight isn't fast enough sometimes.

Even if the faxed pages were received by some sort of software on my PC, I'd still have to print them out. So it's just easier to let the fax machine handle the whole transaction. I use an HP Laserjet fax, which supposedly can also work as a scanner and printer (although I've never tried).

I have an extra phone line for the fax, but that also comes in handy when the cable modem service is on the fritz and I need to resort to dial-up.

mxh

[Stephen Owades]

[Later ... with shiny new eFax account in hand]

A few notes: the PDF option comes with one of the paid-for services; you have to pay for the free service by ignoring the ads and popups that wiggle around while you're viewing the proprietary image files in the software they supply - your only option. One pop-up per session .... it's a fair trade for the service I think. No complaints.

I also found what seems to be a nice, simple fax app for Win2000/XP - MightyFax. Free 30-day demo and if you like it, you have to shell out the grand sum of twenty bucks. And for this, they let you use it on both a desktop and a laptop. And they seem to understand that fax is a convenience, not an all-consuming lifestyle (thinking here about WinFax, which went WAY over the top almost ten years ago ... I hate to think what the current version must be like!)
I send faxes with the software that's included with Windows XP, which does an admirable job for me. It appears as a printer, and when you print a document to "Fax" you are able to select recipient(s) from your address book or enter a one-time recipient manually. I haven't seen any reason to add other fax software to my system.

Of course, I never try to receive faxes on my computer--I receive via eFax.

Thanks for the information about the PDF option. I didn't realize that it was only available to paying customers. I believe I'd become a paying customer before they started offering it, since the choice wasn't given to me as soon as I had to sign up for the pay plan. I could get a local incoming-fax number with the plan I've got now, but as I've given out the free non-local one I haven't chosen to change it. I get next to no "junk fax" messages, by the way, so either they screen them or the junk-fax senders haven't found my number (yet).

[Steve Rindsberg]

I use the software supplied with XP on my main computer too - works just fine, as you say. But my little traveling companion lappie runs Win2000, which doesn't include fax software, so I wanted something to use with it, just in case. It installs a printer driver similar to the one XP uses, but it's a two step process; it creates a fax file in some format or other and drops it into a queue, whence you can modify it, combine it with other fax files from other documents and release it to be sent. Simple, light, workable.

[groucho]

Yes Steve, I did and do still use efax. For a while I needed some heavy two way fax and I spent $10/month with them. But I just use their free fax rx service now, which gives me a fax number someplace in west ciberia where people can send me faxes. WTF, long distance is meaningless these days so I no longer mind. Those faxes then get sent to me via email, so I get them wherever I am and nothing "rings" late at night to bother me.
If I want to send faxes via them, I have to upgrade and pay out again. So for the few faxes I SEND, I use the fax machine or the computer, on the regular phone line.
Works out well enough. The fax machine sleeps quietly in the corner (big old brute) and gets used mainly as a copy machine these days. Takes 300+ foot rolls of thermal paper that are about $5 each, which is way cheaper than all the new plain paper options. They last well over 5 years in the file cabinet, some ten years and longer, and that's good enough for me.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks Jaroucho. Stephen put me onto eFax and I've got a free account with them now. For outbound, the computer's fine. This should work out nicely.

[DickM]

Steve,

I'd love to get rid of it, too. But you'll find as you get older (or have elderly parents to worry about), the entire medical community is still mired in fax. The legal folks are starting to accept PDFs but still seem to want a fax if there is a signature involved.

I had an old HP LaserJet 3100 that I just used standalone for fax and it kept jamming despite two complete "fix your own printer" 4-hour rebuilds. I finally threw it out last year and bought a little Brother laser fax for a few hundred. It's great and the cartridge will probably last my lifetime.

It paid for itself several times when I had to authorize medical treatment for my mother in the middle of the night.

[marlene]

I had an old HP LaserJet 3100 that I just used standalone for fax and it kept jamming despite two complete "fix your own printer" 4-hour rebuilds.

Oy, I guess that means my 3100 is old, too!

It started misfeeding (grabbing several pages of outgoing faxes and pulling them through at the same time) so I bought the part from the "fix your own printer" people and -- sort of -- solved the problem. Now it feeds fine, but as each page emerges into the "tray" (that wire contraption that looks like it's made out of an old coathanger), it suddenly swivels to the right as it emerges. Unfortunately, this does affect the faxed image -- it distorts whatever's in that corner of the page.

Apparently when we were putting the mechanism back together after installing the new doohickey, we did something wrong. One of these days we'll have to take it apart again and see if we can figure it out.

I'd hate to have to replace the 3100. I do still have an ancient Brother thermal fax I'm hanging onto in case of emergencies, but if the 3100 bites the dust I'll have to buy another laser fax. Not sure it would be worth putting a lot of money into fixing the 3100. The misfeeding fix was pretty cheap, though -- definitely worthwhile.

mxh

[Steve Rindsberg]

Dick,

Good point; from this end, sending a fax isn't a problem. Worst case, I can scan and then send via faxmodem from any of several computers. And again worst case, I can always set up one of the boxes to receive if I know a fax will arrive at a particular time.

With mom 800+ miles away, it's good to know about this up front. Perhaps (in a bring-an-umbrella-and-it-never-rains sort of way) I won't need to use the knowledge.

I wish the same on you ;-)