How to Send Fax Through Email

Well, this is a post that I had no plan in writing. But I put this up
because of an experience I had today.

My father told me to setup the fax service in the old computer so he can do
some official work. This computer had windows 98 but had worked pretty well for
a long time until recently when the hard disk failed and I had to replace it.
After reinstalling Windows 98 I had forgotten to setup the fax programme I used
earlier: The Symantec’s winfax pro. So considering it a routine installation I
inserted the CD and went along with the wizard until it said that printer files
were missing and I need to enter the windows 98 CD. That is when I hit the
wall. (Earlier I installed Windows 98 using a CD borrowed from the guy at local
computer repair shop).

Thinking I’ll fix it later by borrowing a CD again or some other means and
needing some help I sat down at my desk, when it hit me maybe there are simpler
means of sending and receiving faxes. After all I am the proponent of moving
from PC applications to all web based applications. So to answer my
question” Is there a method to use online services to send/receive
fax?” I googled around and lo and behold there was some hits. Here I will
jot down what I learned for your use. (You may never know when you need to send
a good old fax)

If you are reluctant to use fax machines there are several ways to overcome
that.

1. Try to install fax software in your machine and use it as I tried to. This
cost you telephone charges, but saves on fax machine and paper.

2. Send fax through VOIP. I am not clear on this yet.

3. Send/receive fax from emails. This is the one that is most popular and very
exciting as you have a hassle free service.

The whole idea behind the third method is to the sender to send an email that
has as its address the number of the recipients fax. The service provider
converts it into fax and sends it to recipient. When some one sends a fax to
your number it is received as a fax and then sends to you as an email.

Sending is pretty clear as you provide the number.

Question: What is my receiver number? Is it my telephone number?

Answer: Well, no they (service provider) provide you with a fax number. This
can be a local number or a toll free number. Everybody who sends you fax should send to that.

Question: Can I know if fax was received and when fax was not delivered?

Answer: Yes, they send all receive fax to your email and all failed attempts
will be notified via email. So it’s simply checking mail.

Question: Do they support all countries?

Answer: That’s the catch! It works pretty well if you are in US, because most
of these companies are based on US not only can this be done but also freely.
But non US countries are either not supported or they can’t get a local number. Although some services supported lot of countries I found that I can’t get a Sri Lankan local number.

Question: How much does it cost?

Answer: This is possibly my top question as I believe not only in web based but
            also free stuff. Any way again in US it can be done for free. Other            countries
it’s either not possible or complicated. Still the cost of initial setup and
            monthly fee is affordable even for third world country. And most come            with 30
day free trial. The problem I found with these services is the cost to send            a fax to Sri Lanka (they consider local fax as long distance as the number                     provided to me is not local) cost way too much. In some instances it was like             $2.WoW! For one fax.

Things are not all bad as there is a great service run by volunteers called
TPC.int which did allow sending fax to Sri Lanka and their total service
is free. There are some good folks out there still!!

So this is pretty exciting and it turning into another experiment to find the
simplest (my parents shouldn’t need to know any complicated stuff except using
email) and most reliable (don’t wont the fax not to be delivered) way to
send/receive fax at low cost or no cost.

I guess the easiest method will be to buy one of those packages offered by top
providers like eFax and RapidFax, for my task the free trial period will be
enough so no initial cost, but the sending rates are not acceptable. This
suggests in signing up for one of these services and just receive fax and use
TPC to send fax. But maybe there are other solutions; I will talk on them later.