NA fax to & from puter

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
20,261
Location
west Texas
Display Name

Display name:
Dave Taylor
I have some kind of mental block about this, have asked before and never got it finished.
Tired of using the old fax machine and want all in and out docs to go through the puter.
I used to, before the server, have the capability of faxing out ie computer to fax machine via the Windows OS through a landline, but in was more complicated as I recall.
I don't want to rely on a landline.
I do maybe 2 a week so can't justify 00's per year.
Can it be done for <10$/mo?
How??
 
There are lots of online fax services that will do this through email.
efax.com
faxzero.com
myfax.com

and many more
 
Also, many of the VOIP service providers offer fax service as a very low cost add on.
 
I still dont get "how-it-works"!
What do you do, how do you get the pdf etc to someones fax machine?
How can their machine fax you: what is the notification method?
 
I still dont get "how-it-works"!
What do you do, how do you get the pdf etc to someones fax machine?
How can their machine fax you: what is the notification method?
It is all done via email oh king except when it isn’t.
 
There are lots of online fax services that will do this through email.
efax.com
faxzero.com
myfax.com

and many more

Almost all of the current fax services are owned and operated by the same company, J2 Communications.

And when one has an outage, all of the others do too.

Almost impossible to find a secondary service that works when J2 is down at any reasonable price.

If you don't mind the regular outages, J2 is fine.
 
So, I'd send an email addressed to 1-800-867-5309 with a pdf attached?
Incoming, I'd tell ppl to send a fax to ???-???-???? (help here) and it would arrive to my inbox.?
 
So, I'd send an email addressed to 1-800-867-5309 with a pdf attached?
Incoming, I'd tell ppl to send a fax to ???-???-???? (help here) and it would arrive to my inbox.?
I think the email formats usually just have you put the phone number in the subject. There will be another email address that you send it to, depending upon the service. They support a number of common document types, such as PDF, Word, etc.
 
OK, thanks
I have VOIP service. How would that play into this? (it was mentioned)
 
So, I'd send an email addressed to 1-800-867-5309 with a pdf attached?
Incoming, I'd tell ppl to send a fax to ???-???-???? (help here) and it would arrive to my inbox.?
Incoming is easy. You pick or are assigned a fax number when enrolling in the service.
 
OK, thanks
I have VOIP service. How would that play into this? (it was mentioned)
Your VOIP provider may have a fax option. It works as described. VOIP providers started offering the service because most of the codecs don’t support fax sing-song.
 
Incoming is easy. You pick or are assigned a fax number when enrolling in the service.
And if you use one of the numbers from the company (J2 or anyone else) you're permanently locked into them. You can NOT port those numbers away from them like a cell phone or even a land line going to another carrier.

Buy your own phone numbers and forward them to the numbers given by the provider. DO NOT PUBLISH THEIR NUMBERS AS YOUR OWN.

You've been warned.
 
Haw! I called my voip provider, Ooma and 5 mins later I am esending/receiving faxes via web FREE!

we is in the 20th centchry, now Mabel!
 
For inbound, I use my Asterisk-based server and set it to auto-detect faxes on my voice line. It delivers the result to my email inbox as a PDF attachment. Outbound is not quite as slick, and is one reason why I’ve investigated this question also.

If your outbound fax documents contain sensitive information, security/privacy with any of the online fax providers is questionable at best.


JKG
 
Since I use it for other things, I send/receive most faxes through my account at ringcentral.com. Incoming faxes show up as PDFs in my mailbox.
 
Outbound fax can be replaced with a scanner and e-mail. It's nearly impossible to find a business or person who can't receive an email with an attached PDF these days.
 
Outbound fax can be replaced with a scanner and e-mail. It's nearly impossible to find a business or person who can't receive an email with an attached PDF these days.
Try a state or fed agency...
 
Try a state or fed agency...

We let those come get the files off of our server. They can’t be expected to do anything normal, but they do seem to barely be able to operate a browser. With training, and I wish I wasn’t serious, but okay... they can even handle downloading things via ssh/sftp and FileZilla.
 
Outbound fax can be replaced with a scanner and e-mail. It's nearly impossible to find a business or person who can't receive an email with an attached PDF these days.

Fax requirement still exist with a lot of financial institutions. Fax is relatively secure transmission vs a email where digital copies are still somewhere in cyberspace.

I have an efax account for all my inbound and outboard. We just finally cancelled our company fax # but a few times a year I still am required to send documents via fax.
 
Fax requirement still exist with a lot of financial institutions. Fax is relatively secure transmission vs a email where digital copies are still somewhere in cyberspace.

I have an efax account for all my inbound and outboard. We just finally cancelled our company fax # but a few times a year I still am required to send documents via fax.

It's worse than that. Apparently sometimes they still want paper, and with the correct color of ink.

When we closed on a house last year I had to provide a temporary power of attorney to a financial institution on actual original notarized paper which I duly FedEx'd to them. They didn't accept it because I had signed it in black ink, and as the lady said on the phone, "How do we know this isn't a zeroxed copy?" They wanted my sig in blue. Aren't there color copiers?? How would they know my blue signed one wasn't a copy? I argued with her but didn't win. Whatever... I took my BLUE ink pen back to my local notary person and redid the whole thing including another FedEx overnight charge!:mad:
 
I need to send a fax once or twice a year. Never need to receive them. Fortunately, we have a multifunction printer/scanner/fax box and an extension cord for the phone line. When I need to send a fax I string the cord over to the "box" and send the fax. Then I unplug it, coil up the cord and stuff it behind the cabinet where it spends 99.99% of its time. Works fine. Just sent one this morning.
 
It's worse than that. Apparently sometimes they still want paper, and with the correct color of ink.

When we closed on a house last year I had to provide a temporary power of attorney to a financial institution on actual original notarized paper which I duly FedEx'd to them. They didn't accept it because I had signed it in black ink, and as the lady said on the phone, "How do we know this isn't a zeroxed copy?" They wanted my sig in blue. Aren't there color copiers?? How would they know my blue signed one wasn't a copy? I argued with her but didn't win. Whatever... I took my BLUE ink pen back to my local notary person and redid the whole thing including another FedEx overnight charge!:mad:

I have an attorney friend who always signs legal documents in blue for that very reason. Makes sense to me.
 
I need to send a fax once or twice a year. Never need to receive them. Fortunately, we have a multifunction printer/scanner/fax box and an extension cord for the phone line. When I need to send a fax I string the cord over to the "box" and send the fax. Then I unplug it, coil up the cord and stuff it behind the cabinet where it spends 99.99% of its time. Works fine. Just sent one this morning.
Lots of free ways to send a fax. I use an app called Voxox. A lot of us don’t have land lines anymore. My multi function printer will do it, but it needs dial tone (a thing of the past).
 
Lots of free ways to send a fax. I use an app called Voxox. A lot of us don’t have land lines anymore. My multi function printer will do it, but it needs dial tone (a thing of the past).

We still have a land line (OK, VoIP) as the signal from Verizon at our house is not the world's best. Verizon would be happy to sell us a box to provide a local hotspot for "only" $250. And chew up our allotment of data from Comcast. No thanks.
 
We still have a land line (OK, VoIP) as the signal from Verizon at our house is not the world's best. Verizon would be happy to sell us a box to provide a local hotspot for "only" $250. And chew up our allotment of data from Comcast. No thanks.
I just don't have any other need for a land line at home, VoIP or otherwise and a big part of my business is deploying business voice solutions. That seems to be the trend with people I know and meet. My ex FIL just gave up his landline for a cell phone and he was the last person I saw doing that. Voice over IP only uses about 100K or less per session, so it really isn't a bandwidth thing. If I wanted one, Ooma offers a free phone number, you just have to buy about $100 in equipment. I gave that up at least 6 years ago. We dropped our business fax that long ago, as well. Most of the faxing I do now is to test other businesses' fax machines, when I do a voice deployment. Maybe once a year, I have some other reason to send a fax. I can't remember the last time I needed to receive a fax, though. I would say somewhere around 70% of the people I know don't have landlines of any kind and if you look at the millennials, it is probably close to zero.
 
Fax requirement still exist with a lot of financial institutions. Fax is relatively secure transmission vs a email where digital copies are still somewhere in cyberspace.

I have an efax account for all my inbound and outboard. We just finally cancelled our company fax # but a few times a year I still am required to send documents via fax.

Never had any problems getting any financial company to change their mind when they want my money.

I have an attorney friend who always signs legal documents in blue for that very reason. Makes sense to me.

Makes zero sense. Color printers and copiers are decades old nowadays.

I sign crap all the time with an image from my computer. If they want something else, I simply say “no”. Works pretty well.

It helps if you’re not beholden to them. They never seen to care what color I sign the checks out to them in. Go figure.
 
It's worse than that. Apparently sometimes they still want paper, and with the correct color of ink.

When we closed on a house last year I had to provide a temporary power of attorney to a financial institution on actual original notarized paper which I duly FedEx'd to them. They didn't accept it because I had signed it in black ink, and as the lady said on the phone, "How do we know this isn't a zeroxed copy?" They wanted my sig in blue. Aren't there color copiers?? How would they know my blue signed one wasn't a copy? I argued with her but didn't win. Whatever... I took my BLUE ink pen back to my local notary person and redid the whole thing including another FedEx overnight charge!:mad:
And worse than that? Places that make you sign your legal name, despite your signature not usually including the same. So basically, you don’t want my signature (I.e, a verifiable placement of ink that doesn’t change and is my mark), you just want a cursive version of my full legal name?

That one makes no sense. An “x” is a legal signature. Why the hell do I have to sign “Nicholas” on a mortgage?
 
And worse than that? Places that make you sign your legal name, despite your signature not usually including the same. So basically, you don’t want my signature (I.e, a verifiable placement of ink that doesn’t change and is my mark), you just want a cursive version of my full legal name?

That one makes no sense. An “x” is a legal signature. Why the hell do I have to sign “Nicholas” on a mortgage?

That’s interesting. I feel exactly the opposite. If you catch me signing something “Nate” I definitely don’t care about it in the slightest. I sign the legal name to stuff that might be needed for legal things.

It’s also a reminder to me years later how many effs I gave about a document if someone were to thrust something in my face and ask me if I signed it. If it says “Nate” I truly DGAF about it or thought it was useless/unenforceable/dumb/not worth the time.

Good memory jogger for me.

“Oh yeah, I scribbled my name on that unenforceable crap, yes. Would you like me to explain why?” LOL. :)
 
That’s interesting. I feel exactly the opposite. If you catch me signing something “Nate” I definitely don’t care about it in the slightest. I sign the legal name to stuff that might be needed for legal things.

It’s also a reminder to me years later how many effs I gave about a document if someone were to thrust something in my face and ask me if I signed it. If it says “Nate” I truly DGAF about it or thought it was useless/unenforceable/dumb/not worth the time.

Good memory jogger for me.

“Oh yeah, I scribbled my name on that unenforceable crap, yes. Would you like me to explain why?” LOL. :)
If I never use that, and later there’s a challenge to the validity, I would imagine the bank would have a hard time proving that the signature that looks nothing like my signature is valid. Kind of a dumb move when an affidavit of one and the same would work even better.
 
If I never use that, and later there’s a challenge to the validity, I would imagine the bank would have a hard time proving that the signature that looks nothing like my signature is valid. Kind of a dumb move when an affidavit of one and the same would work even better.

Anything less than digital signatures from a private key really is decades below state of the art, these days, anyway. But they haven’t caught on.

Scribbles on a page. It’s really all about trust, and signing with a full name bs nickname, I agree, adds no actual trust to the act.
 
Signatures can be a joke. Back 44 years ago my wife and I were hit broadside by a car that ran a stop sign and hit us on our motorcycle. When I was hauled into the hospital they promptly jammed an IV needle into my left arm and tied it down to a board. They then held a clip board over me and demanded that I sign a form. Nice. I'm left handed and they just immobilized my writing hand. They told me to do the best I could with my right hand. It's a good thing I remember that as I would NEVER admit that the scribbles on that form were my signature.
 
I see my thread about faxing to and from puter is still alive, albeit a long way from where it started.
Today I was efaxing some things and this thread reminded me to give an update.
I can fax in and out and there are some conveniences to it (document storing and tracking) but given a sheet of paper, the fax machine would beat the computerized method by several minutes!
Sticking with it. Looking for shortcuts too.
 
Back
Top