Fax machine
 

I need to replace my old piece of junk HP 700 inkjet fax machine. I need a fairly low volume, good print quality, non-color replacement. I don't want to use it as a printer or scanner. It is for my personal use (in my office) only.

Any suggestions?

Have you thought about eFax (www.efax.com)? All your faxes arrive in your in-box as pdf files so you can retrieve them where ever you are. I got eFax several years ago and haven't had a fax machine in my home office since. For outgoing faxes, you can just tag the file(s) you want faxed and off they go. If I need to fax a paper document, I scan it first on my combo printer/scanner/copier.

Get yourself a cheap panasonic at Costco or Staples.

Definitely Efax
 

I agree with the eFax suggestion. The other advantage is you have an e-record of all your incoming/outgoing faxes and you don't even have to pay call charges for the fax (at least in the US- haven't tried an overseas fax yet)>.

MB

Efax really isn't an alternative if you send a lot of papers... Scanning the documents, then adding them one by one to the efax tool and then sending is a heck of a lot more work than just sticking them in your $30 fax machine.

Staples often has machines for as low as that (after rebates). At $9.95 a month it is hard for efax to compete with that.

Another option for VOIP users (like Vonage) is to add a fax line to that; 9.95 a month as well, which gets you a dedicated fax line.

This works out very well actually...

-Vincent

I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. I travel a lot, and a $30 fax machine sitting on my home office desk receiving faxes doesn't help me nearly as much as an eFax account where I can receive and send faxes anywhere I have an internet connection. Of course, YMMV.

I'd like to add a low budget plug for Onesuite.com and their Messageone service which costs $1 (!) a month for a receive only fax to email service.
The number I got has a 909 area code (Calif?). Efax has a free fax to email service but you are limited to 20 pages per month and get several marketing emails for each document you receive.

Yes, I have a cheapo fax machine at home but Messageone really shines when I'm on the road. I like it so much that I often use it at home to scan documents to email for online storage. Much faster than a software based scan to edocument solution.

As for faxing documents from the road I usually locate a fax machine and use my own calling card if necessary.

Some of you will remember that onesuite had some issues last October but that was a blip in several years of reliable service.

Works for me.

Jim

While I have had eFax paid subscription for years and generally find it of use, I have been continually frustrated by three things which keep me likewise continually on the look out for alternatives to jump ship to:

1. Delay in receiving faxes. Sometimes somebody will fax me something which I don't receive for hours. Probably due to network/server congestion, but I don't believe I'm paying eFax to be on the butt end of their capacity issues.

2. Customer service is terrible, need to get something done? Don't - you'll never get an answer, and if you do, the diction/verbiage of the responses make it sound like it's an overseas outsourced center.

3. Junk faxes, need I say more.

Is the OneSuite fax service as good as its long distance, notwithstanding its system outage last year?

Messageone is as fast as your mail server. For this reason I don't port it to gmail.

Customer service is what you'd expect for $1 a month - same as your experience.

Never gotten any junk faxes or marketing emails.

There may be an issue with faxes over ten pages but I've never had a problem with shorter faxes.

Jim (sorry to hijack the thread but I consider the service to be an extension / acessory of my fax machine)

I use onebox for follow-me voice mail, in/out faxing, email consolidation, etc. It's about $15 a month with an 800 number. It will outbound fax attachments (pdf, tif, jpg, etc) and emails. Not for everyone but works for me. There are times when I just want a plain old fax machine at the home office though.

I tried a cheap panasonic once. What a piece of crap it was.

I would not get a cheap panasonic or any other type with ribbon transfer or inkjet technology. Spend a few bucks (around $200) for a b&w laser fax. Brother makes excellent products. If you spend $200 or so, the thing will last you virtually forever with light to moderate use.

I have a voice mail/fax/etc service. It doesn't do anything when you need to fax something from the house that isn't scanned in to the computer. But I do use the fax service number for all incoming faxes, and then, if necessary, print them on my old HP4P b&w laser printer which is another one of those things that's lasted forever. (And no, I don't think HP makes them like that anymore.) It's probably 11 - 12 years old already.

-David