I am buying a new All in One Printer with Fax.
I am wondering if it is possible to send a Fax using Skype & this printer with Fax.
If yes, how & what other hardware, software do I need ?
If not what are other alternatives.
Thank You
Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, mac_h8r1, Nemesis
just brew it! wrote:Yeah, fax machines pretty much require a traditional phone line to work. The whole point of a fax machine is to send scanned documents over a hard-wired phone line. Without a phone line, the fax part of that all-in-one is probably not going to be of much use to you.
What you're really looking for is a scanner plus some sort of software faxing solution. Dunno if there's any cheap/free way to do this over a service like Skype; I suspect that the voice codecs used by VOIP services will mangle fax machine signals since they are optimized for voice, not data.
dan99t wrote:So what is the difference between a regular scanned attachment send via an e mail & a scanned attachment sent by "myfax" ?
just brew it! wrote:dan99t wrote:So what is the difference between a regular scanned attachment send via an e mail & a scanned attachment sent by "myfax" ?
Well, if you send it via Myfax you are forcing the recipient to make a hardcopy whether they want/need one or not, unless the fax "machine" you're sending it to is actually another Myfax (or similar) account instead of a real fax machine. You're also (possibly) losing some resolution since a higher-resolution document may need to be re-sampled to one of the resolutions that the fax protocol and/or target fax machine supports, and (probably) losing the ability to send color documents since most fax machines don't support color.
Fax protocol operates at dial-up modem speeds. So even though the upload to Myfax will go at the speed of your broadband connection, delivery to the recipient's fax machine will be slow; large documents will take a very long time.
Services like Myfax are essentially a "bridge" between e-mail and fax machines -- they allow you to send/receive scanned documents to/from traditional fax machines via e-mail. Services like this only make sense in situations where the person at the other end prefers (or requires) that the document be transmitted via traditional fax for some strange reason. It is a bit silly to use it in situations where both parties have a broadband Internet connection and the ability to send/receive scanned attachments, since you could send the document in higher quality (and faster, and for free!) as a directly e-mailed attachment, instead of paying for an intermediary service to convert the e-mail attachment to fax machine protocol and route it over the legacy analog phone network for you.
Fax machines are an obsolete (1960s) technology which will gradually fade away as all the technologically impaired people who can't handle a scanner retire from the workforce...
dan99t wrote:OK, where are the real techies not to insult you sir ?
Jason181 wrote:dan99t wrote:OK, where are the real techies not to insult you sir ?
First, I've got to say that your response is insulting. JBI took time to write you a detailed and technically correct response, and you ask "where are the real techs?"
To answer your question (and stay somewhat on topic, at least), the fax hardware in an all-in-one printer adds very, very little to the overall cost and may entice some buyers to purchase if they need that functionality. After all, you've already got the scanning and printing portion; adding a fax modem and a phone connector is pretty much the totality of the added cost.
I have tried faxing over magicjack and could not get it to work; I suspect it's the same story as other voip in that it's a lossy codec not designed for data transfer.
Most people would just scan the document and send it via email. Make sure not to send anything sensitive without encryption.
edit: You might want to show some respect to the administrator that has 2,000 times as many posts.
dan99t wrote:I made myself very clear & showed all the respect. It is you who is trying to disrespect both of us...So please go ahead & do some research & I am sure you will find out why I disagree...Does disagreeing mean no respect ?...Explain to me why there are are services that charge arms & legs to have you send a fax that you can just scan & e mail it ?
dan99t wrote:And who would want to pay $10.00 per month to companies like efax & myfax ? when you can simply buy a scanner for $50.00 or less & scan & send documents as e mail attachments in color ?
SecretSquirrel wrote:As far as why fax is still around, despite what the denziens of a tech site might thing, email is not ubiquitous,
SecretSquirrel wrote:and believe it or not, a fax is a submittable document in a court of law and in many cases, a printed copy of an emailed PDF of the same document is not.
just brew it! wrote:SecretSquirrel wrote:and believe it or not, a fax is a submittable document in a court of law and in many cases, a printed copy of an emailed PDF of the same document is not.
I wasn't aware of that. Given that e-mail to fax gateways exist, that rule is rather silly (and completely obsolete).
SecretSquirrel wrote:No, you cannot use a VOIP connection to send faxes. There may be a few exceptions, but the codecs used for VOIP compression are lossy (think MP3 at low bitrate) and destroy the signal generated by a fax machine.
bryanl wrote:Fax via VOIP is a technical problem with frequency response, latency, and distortion issues. Fax is inherently analog. The process of converting a digital document (PDF, for instance), into a series of analog signals which are then digitized for voip to be converted back to analog and then, finally, to a digital representation of an image tends to multiply problems.
just brew it! wrote:But it is in the business world (where most fax usage has traditionally been), at least in most industrialized countries. I suppose in some parts of the world fax machines may still be more common.