Personal computing discussed

Moderators: renee, mac_h8r1, Nemesis

 
dan99t
Gerbil First Class
Topic Author
Posts: 169
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:19 am

Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer with (F

Sat May 12, 2012 8:08 pm

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
 
Asbestos
Gerbil In Training
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Oct 23, 2008 2:08 pm

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sat May 12, 2012 8:22 pm

Fax machines usually have to be connected to an actual phone line to work. You could use hardware like http://www.magicjack.com/ to connect the fax to a phone line. Alternately, scan your documents and use an online fax service like myfax or efax. I subscribe to myfax ($10/mo) and it works great for occasional use. You can send and receive faxes using your email. They might offer a free trial.
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sat May 12, 2012 8:28 pm

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.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
dan99t
Gerbil First Class
Topic Author
Posts: 169
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:19 am

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sat May 12, 2012 10:40 pm

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.


So what is the difference between a regular scanned attachment send via an e mail & a scanned attachment sent by "myfax" ?
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sat May 12, 2012 11:23 pm

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...
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
dan99t
Gerbil First Class
Topic Author
Posts: 169
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:19 am

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sun May 13, 2012 2:08 am

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...


Hmmm....

I agree to disagree with you.

If it was that simple, I don't think most companies like HP, Epson, Cannon, Samsung........... etc would be offering fax facility in their all in one modern printers.

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 ?

OK, where are the real techies not to insult you sir ?
 
Jason181
Gerbil First Class
Posts: 186
Joined: Thu May 19, 2005 7:23 pm
Location: Oregon

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sun May 13, 2012 2:53 am

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
Gerbil First Class
Topic Author
Posts: 169
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:19 am

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sun May 13, 2012 6:09 am

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.


I did show lots of respect & I clearly mentioned that I disagree.

Number of posts doesn't mean that you have to agree with every word & opinion by the poster. Disrespect is not same thing as disagreeing. Don't you think that I looked at who replied & how many posts he had & then & only then I said that at I don't mean any disrespect ?

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. Ask those companies, are they fooling the world by offering fax option & fax services or are they protecting people in one way or the other ?

Again to you sir, I have all the respect in the world for keeping this forum alive.





Does disagreeing mean no respect ?

I think you ought to dig dipper than that.

I still stick to the theory that there is more to it. 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 ?

Why there are so many fools who instead of buying a cheap scanner, pays them hunfreds of dollars to fax it ?
 
Jason181
Gerbil First Class
Posts: 186
Joined: Thu May 19, 2005 7:23 pm
Location: Oregon

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sun May 13, 2012 7:00 am

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 ?


You clearly didn't know how to do what you were asking; those services are for people like you that just want it to "work." I hardly think $10/month is "arms and legs" (sic).

When now two people give you the information you asked for, you question their knowledge. Disagreements are fine, if they have a basis in fact. If you knew the answer already, why are you here? I'd suggest you reread both of our posts for the information that you requested.
 
SecretSquirrel
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2726
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: North DFW suburb...
Contact:

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sun May 13, 2012 8:09 am

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.

There are a number of email to fax and fax to email gateways floating around. Google is your friend here.

As far as why fax is still around, despite what the denziens of a tech site might thing, email is not ubiquitous, 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.
--SS
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sun May 13, 2012 8:19 am

@dan99t - As Jason181 has noted, the guts of a fax machine are essentially a low-resolution scanner and monochrome printer, so a printer/scanner device already contains most of the required hardware. All the expensive bits (complicated mechanical stuff and precision optics) are already there. Adding the fax capability probably adds a dollar or two to the manufacturer's total cost, so it makes sense for them to still offer it since there's still some demand for the feature.

You even said yourself:
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 ?

The answer is, people who need to send documents to other people who insist on continuing to use fax machines (or, for whatever reason, don't have e-mail access but do have access to a fax). Fax machines are slow, they waste paper, the output quality typically isn't as good as even a cheap inkjet printer, and they require (and tie up) an analog phone line.

You can disagree if you like, but pretty much the only arguments in favor of fax machines these days are legacy compatibility and the fact that they are basically a Xerox machine with a telephone attached; so if you know how to use a Xerox machine and a telephone, you pretty much already know how to use a fax machine.

SecretSquirrel wrote:
As far as why fax is still around, despite what the denziens of a tech site might thing, email is not ubiquitous,

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.

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).

Edit: Clarified some stuff...
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
bryanl
Gerbil Team Leader
Posts: 251
Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2003 10:27 am
Location: Nevada
Contact:

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sun May 13, 2012 10:48 am

the legal distinctions are very important - but a legacy issue more than anything else, I think. I used to fill in fax forms with an image editor, including pasting a signature, in order to meet legal requirements when sent a fax form to fill out.

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.

wikipedia has a good page on this and an I'net search can also help.
 
SecretSquirrel
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2726
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: North DFW suburb...
Contact:

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sun May 13, 2012 11:24 am

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).


No arguments there, but the legal world is very, very slow to change.

--SS
 
notfred
Maximum Gerbil
Posts: 4610
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2004 10:10 am
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sun May 13, 2012 3:18 pm

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.


Yup. I used to work on the Cisco AS5000 Voice/Fax/Data gateways. They'd kick in different software on the DSP depending on if it was a voice call, fax call or data (modem) call that they needed to encode and send over the IP network.
 
ludi
Lord High Gerbil
Posts: 8646
Joined: Fri Jun 21, 2002 10:47 pm
Location: Sunny Colorado front range

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Sun May 13, 2012 5:19 pm

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.

FWIW at my job (consulting power engineer) we still used the fax machine quite a bit when I started in '07 but it has been drying up rapidly, and we finally switched to a Fax-to-email gateway service to handle the residual. The power industry is extremely slow to change, mostly because it involves a lot of capital equipment that is rated for 25-30 years and often lasts 40-50 in practice. That gets reflected in the rate of technology acquisition, particularly among the ultra-rural bit players who don't control any transmission infrastructure and thus aren't directly subject to NERC's reliability and data logging rules.

But, even a crusty old line superintendent who worked his way up from a line crew apprenticeship has generally figured out email these days.
Abacus Model 2.5 | Quad-Row FX with 256 Cherry Red Slider Beads | Applewood Frame | Water Cooling by Brita Filtration
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Mon May 14, 2012 6:06 am

Sounds more or less consistent with my experience. The place where I work does not even have their own fax machine; the office building has a copy center with a shared one that tenants can use for a per-page fee. After 7 years at this job, I've probably needed to send/receive a fax less than a half-dozen times in total, and all of those were in the first few years (I don't think I've touched the fax machine since around 2009).
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
The Egg
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2938
Joined: Sun Apr 06, 2008 4:46 pm

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Thu May 17, 2012 7:06 pm

Lower tech jobs like the construction industry still use Fax machines quite heavily (in conjunction with Email). I know this from personal experience. It's often much easier to just slap in a sheet of paper, hit speed-dial #32 and press start. It also eliminates any PEBKAC issues on the other end. Even though it's old tech, Fax Machines will still be around many years from now. Anyone who claims otherwise is out of touch with reality for a large percentage of the workforce.


As for the original poster, what you want to do is possible, but will require some additional hardware and technical knowhow. Try typing "voip fax" or "t38 fax" in Google. The first result here gives a bit of info and some links.
 
hp9000
Gerbil
Posts: 34
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2009 10:46 am

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Tue Jun 05, 2012 11:02 am

If the difference in price between an AIO printer with or without fax means that you may have to resign print quality over features, I'd say ditch the fax and buy one when you need it, and go for the unit that has the best printer. It's what you'll use most of the time, anyway. If you need a fax, you could later buy a PCI-e card or even a USB fax modem like these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16825164005
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16825104013

In my experience, AIO printers are usually a mediocre printer + mediocre scanner + mediocre photocopier. Plus, when one of the functions stops working, you have to replace the whole thing. I prefer separate units, unless the environment forces me to go for a AIO solution (think my mechanic's garage or some other place where separate units would be more of a PITA to take care of).

By the way, Windows comes with its own faxing software, so you don't need to buy anything. And you have the flexibility of saving both incoming and outgoing faxes and re-print them whenever you want.

Cheers,
hp
 
kevin1234
Gerbil In Training
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2012 5:04 pm

Re: Is it possible to send a fax from All in One Printer wit

Mon Jun 18, 2012 5:11 pm

Sorry to say that you are going to need a land line. MyFax.com charges I think 10 per month and oyu can send faxes that way but I think you will be restricted from sending any type of broadcasts for the 10 per month.

May want to consider a service if that is what you are after.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest
GZIP: On