I would never buy a color laser printer. They're expensive, the prints are ugly. If he wants color, get an inkjet. B/W laser is the most cost effective though.

That depends on what type of color laser and what paper. I've used an HP ColorLaser multi-function in my small office for the past 2 years and been very happy. For nice color prints, use glossy color laser paper, for standard prints and business docs you just use a laser paper instead of standard copy paper or multi-purpose.

Only problem with the HP's is the auto-document feeder. Has occasional problems grabbing, even after I put a new set of rollers in.

Agreed. I have an HP color multifunction as well, and it's been perfectly fine for what I need. We're not talking about printing photographs, just documents that look nicer in color, or presentations.

As far as the Windows fax recommendation...<slaps forehead> How didn't I think of that? Of course, the office file server runs Linux, so I'll have to find a Linux-compatible fax modem. But that shouldn't be too hard (famous last words)...

Ding! We have a winner! Deubster's solution above will do it. I forgot about the Windows fax console - they don't even install it by default anymore and most new PC's don't have built in modems. There is a great step by step procedure for doing this here: http://www.fax-to-pdf.com/ This solution uses FCoder's Universal Document Converter software to produce the PDF, but I think you could use any of the free PDF converters to do that.

Just run this on a PC and store to the network share. If you want, set the modem to pick up on ring 2 and you will have an audible alert of an incoming fax.

I'd recommend this:

http://www.silexamerica.com/applicat...etworking.html

I use one on an HP scanner so that I can access it across my network and it works great.

A bit of a sidetrack from this thread; mods, feel free to move to a new thread.

Hate hate hate HATE HP scanning software. It bloats the computer up, loses connectivity with the scanner on the LAN, and half the time hangs the computer during shutdown/logout (the hpqtra08.exe process won't end), and generally doesn't work.

Been trying to wean my office off of faxing and move to scanning and emailing PDFs. They're technophobes, so the concept of saving a PDF and attaching it to an email is pushing it.

I'm looking for a robust laser multifunction device that can:'

• scan as a PDF to a network share
• scan directly to an email address
• preferably print in color
• optionally receive faxes and email them as a PDF to a specified address

So far, the only one I'm even moderately familiar with that does this is the Xerox stuff like the Phaser 8560MFP/D. I have seen some WorkCentres in action emailing PDFs right from the device's control panel, and it's slick.

Any other suggestions?

I say "optionally" on that last point because I'm thinking about trying to eliminate faxing entirely. Right now, my two satellite offices are fully VoIP over a WAN...except for the POTS lines to the fax machines. I'd like to cut the POTS lines entirely to save costs, so I'm trying to engineer a solution to still allow us to send and receive faxes but not use those POTS lines.

Which leads me to part #2 of this question:

I've got a Trixbox server with ReceiveFax on a PRI. Some initial testing indicates positive results for receiving faxes over the PRI (which is known to be troublesome), and we all LOVE the idea of assigning each user their own personal fax DID. (Note that porting numbers to an external faxing service is not an option; none offers DIDs in Alaska.) The only issues I've seen so far are with some HP multifunction devices, where there is apparently a long delay after the fax negotiation but before the datastream starts being sent; it's resolved by telling the HP scanner to "scan & fax," which eliminates the delay, but we can't tell all of our customers to do that (and many probably have HP faxes). But I don't think this is an insurmountable problem, so I can probably plan on getting that working.

The other option would be to get an ATA for the MFP we purchase above and let them handle receiving the faxes, but again, two of these will be at a satellite office that is connected to the Trixbox by VoIP over WAN, and I don't trust the QoS on the WAN enough to be consistently perfect.

Sending may be a bit more of an issue, compounded by the fact that the long distance out on the PRI is insanely expensive (this is an ILEC in Alaska we're talking about), so I'd like to use something that bypasses that, whether that's a faxing service (email directly to the fax service from the device), some email-to-T.38 gateway software installed on the Trixbox that sends a fax to a T.38-compliant SIP trunk provider (i.e. "scan to email" and send to [email protected]rnal) or whatever...or is there a multifunction device that would fit my above requirements that implements T.38 natively? (The only reference to T.38 I could find with Xerox is on the WorkCentre 7120--way above our budget.)

Any ideas on this? I hate the very concept of faxing (analog...paper...POTS lines...ugh), but as much as I hate it, I have to admit it's not dead yet. I'm doing by best to bypass it and eventually kill it, though.

Fujitsu fi-6010N will solve most of your issues, except the fax in and the printing.

You'll struggle to find and all-in-one to do decent duplex scans, never mind scan to email.

Stick to a decent printer for printing and use a paid for fax to email service, or install something like FaxVoip on a machine in the office.

The Brother MFC-9460CDN, MFC-9560CDW, MFC-9840CDW, and MFC-9970CDW will do just about all you mention, though I don't think they will email received faxes.

I'm planning on getting a USB fax modem for the Linux server so it can receive incoming faxes.