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Using old technology in new ways

Email has become a big part of our daily lives for many kiwis, especially us nerdy types. However we still get many enquiries from clients interested in setting up fax machines and numbers.

I would like to talk about some new technology around the old technology of faxing and help fax users out there move into the digital age.

Faxing vs. Email

A big advantage of email is that the messages you send are essentially free. When you run a fax machine you need to pay for the machine itself, paper & ink and if you are a business, you often pay for the phone call and the phone line the fax uses as well.

The great thing about using a fax is that you can easily draw or write your fax and send it away, where you may need to spend more time in front of a computer to type or draw the same document before emailing it.

If you have a scanner with your computer you can often combine the best parts of both technologies, scanning your handwritten document into an electronic file you can then email.

Handling faxes well

When you have a busy fax machine you will usually need a dedicated phone line, to make sure your fax doesn't interrupt someone elses phone call in your home, or doesn't tie up your business phone line.

Faxability is a great service you can get from your phone provider. Using a special dial tone they can tell your fax whether a call coming in is a fax or not. This means your fax will only pickup fax calls and leave your phone ringing for voice calls. You will need a fax that supports this feature but almost every current model and new model does already.

Usually costing around $4 per month it can free up your phone line and save you hundreds of dollars per year on a second phone line.

Fax to Email services
The best combination of these two services comes in when using your email to send faxes.
A fax to email service can give you a fax number, receive faxes for you on that number and email the faxes through to your account instead of printing them out. This is a great way to keep a fax number going but cut out all the costly consumables.

The emails usually arrive with a PDF file in your inbox and you can easily reply, forward and archive these messages electronically.

The next step after this is an email to fax service which will allow you to email a fax number, printing out a fax at the other end just as if you had a real fax machine!

Charges for these services usually start at around $10 per month, plus a cost per fax sent or received. This is a significant saving over buying an actual fax machine and there is no need to provide a second phone line. With Number Portability you can even take your existing fax number over to the new service so you don't miss a beat!

For more information check out:
www.tnz.co.nz/Services/FaxServices
www.ifax.co.nz
www.faxmail.co.nz