OT. Fax Software

[The Medway Handyman]

Hi

Anyone know of cheap or free fax software. Only want to receive fax's not send them.

[tony sayer]

In article , The Medway Handyman writes

Do a Google for "faxtalk" thats what I've been using for the last five or so years. Don't know where it cam from but it works well. IIRC I think that Windoze has some sort of Fax s/w built in. You will of course need a modem for it but their very cheap....

[tony sayer]

In article , tony sayer writes

Further to that it seemed as if its was the bundled one they give away with the modem. I'd expect a fax modem would come with that or something similar.

If you do have a modem you can fax a windows word doc directly...FWIW!......

[Owain]

If you don't want to have to leave your PC on all the time and manually set it to receive faxes every time, you can get an 0870 fax-to-email service.

Owain

[Lobster]

I use Windows XP's built-in fax software to *send* occasional faxes; and I'm pretty sure you can receive with it too. However, my solution for the very few faxes I receive is to use a fax-email gateway; ie, my fax callers dial a number and it appears in my inbox as an email attachment. I use

which gives me a free 0870 xxxxxx number

- obviously that charges callers at the so-called 'national rate' but given that it's only used by the occasional business contacting me, 3 or

4 times a year, that's OK by me. However you can get a more customer-friendly number if required, by paying a sub.

David

[Graham.]

Yes I set a free account up a few years ago at a firm where I used to work.

Its still working AFAIK.

But, looking at the efax website now I can'`t see where you set up an account without having to pay.

[Lobster]

Yes, just had a shufti myself and it's definitely well concealed!

seems to be the right link.

David

[Dave Plowman (News)]

My ancient Acorn uses the printer driver to convert any suitable file to a TIFF for fax use, so in practice anything you can print on the machine may be faxed successfully to any fax machine - within the limits of the system resolution.

[Jonathan Schneider]

There are services out there that give you your own fax number and email incoming faxes to you. The cost tends to depend on the type of number. If that allows you to stop paying rental on a fax line you're quids in.

Jon

[meow2222]

common question on alt.comp.freeware

NT

[Andy Hall]

On Tue, 4 Jul 2006 23:49:36 +0100, Jonathan Schneider wrote (in article ):

If you have a Vodafone account it can receive faxes which can be retrieved by email.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Unless you're a business with high fax usage, you don't need a dedicated line - a fax modem will respond to the incoming signal from a remote fax.

[The Natural Philosopher]

And email you and/or print it.

I used WinFax for many years before deciding that no one used fax anymore anyway.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've found faxing a complaint gets far faster - and from higher up - attention than either phoning or e-mailing. Perhaps because the old fax machine is still in the manager's office while the computers are in the 'typing pool'...

[Andy Hall]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006 22:38:01 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote (in article ):

It may have changed recently, but AIUI, a fax has status as a legal document

- i.e. the machine can produce a receipt, rather like telex machines had/have the same status. I am not sure that emails do.

[Mike Barnes]

There's no "may" about it.

It's not as simple as that. I often have occasion to contact small businesses (small remote foreign hotels, for the most part) which I find through the web. They often don't have their own web site, so I depend on web directories for contact information. Those directories might show no e-mail address, or an out-of-date e-mail address, but a perfectly good fax number. Fax numbers, unlike e-mail addresses, rarely change. And even if this small business does have e-mail, that's no use to me if I can't find the right address. They have a fax because they've always had a fax and people such as me find it useful.

The other thing in fax's favour is that an English-language fax received in remote foreign parts isn't likely to be binned on sight as spam.

[Andy Hall]

On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 10:56:18 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote (in article ):

It is of course a nonsense.

It was many years after the adoption of group 3 fax that this became legally acceptable as well as letter and telex.

I still get a reasonable number of faxes and send a few. As far as business is concerned it's mainly purchase orders from companies who have hard copy as the procedure in their ISO 9002 procedures, communications with the accounting firm and the bank.

As somebody else said, I use fax for anything that is in the direction of a supplier and may evolve into a "discussion". I think it does seem to carry a bit more moment than emails.

In terms of provisioning, I have my non-IP telephony services provisioned via ISDN. There is an ISDN router/modem which provides a last-ditch access to my network and servers in case there is a failure of my ADSL and WDSL services. A Fax card installed in a server takes care of fax transmission and reception, and the software can be accessed remotely over IP to view received faxes while travelling.

ISDN has the capability of multiple subscriber numbers. An ISDN basic rate line supports two concurrent calls but can have additional numbers assigned to the line (up to 10 with BT IIRC). Thus one can have multiple phone and fax numbers and the incremental cost over the line cost is very small. For me it is effective for Fax use, having different numbers for different businesses and for the kids to have personal phone numbers while not incurring additional full line rentals.

Business service ISDN is still fairly expensive, but the Highway service for home users is pretty cheap - last time I looked equal to two analogue line rentals. I believe you can have three MSN numbers on top. This is a cost effective solution for home businesses and home offices etc.

[Tony Bryer]

We run our credit card terminal on ours - it means we can put through transactions whilst the person is on the phone

For us faxes have do their uses especially where users of our software have printing problems or where a sketch is worth a thousand words. Sure some could scan them and email the scan but only some.

They also have their uses if you want to scam people. Before I registered with the Fax Preference Service (which really does work) I got endless scams: either quizzes with obvious answers, so-called polls or validation questionnaires. All of course requiring replies to 09 numbers with clockwork faxes so the reply would cost the maximum allowed £5. The last of the three was perhaps the most worrying as one could see that in lots of firms a well-meaning but simple clerical person would think to take the load off their boss by ticking the details as correct and sending them back.