Faxing software

These days, sending and receiving faxes is becoming less and less common, as emails and PDFs have become the preferred means of sending information. However, sometimes you just can't escape faxing, so what do you do if you don't want to have to hang on to that old machine taking up space in the corner?

Well, a good alternative is to ditch the hardware and go with faxing software. You could save space, money and paper as a result.

How does it work?

Firstly, there are plenty of faxing software programs available, ranging in price from about $40–150. As usual, you generally get what you pay for. The things to look out for include:

• ability to send faxes from any application (usually using the Print command)
• ability to send and receive faxes via email
• ability to convert faxes to PDFs or other familiar format
• ability to receive faxes manually (useful if you share the fax line with your normal phone/answering machine).

I use FaxSTF, which is only available for Macintosh, but the principles are similar for most good faxing programs. There is also a good list of fax software for Windows.

Receiving faxes

I use my computer's built-in modem to connect it to the phone line. I share this phone line (using a small splitter which I bought from Tandy) with my business phone/answering machine. Because I don't receive faxes that often and the line is shared, the fax program is set not to receive faxes automatically. Thus, most of the time, I simply use the phone line for my normal business calls.

When I answer the phone and hear those ear-splitting fax noises, I simply open FaxSTF, click on 'Manual Receive' and, after a couple of seconds, the program takes over the call and receives the fax.

The only disadvantage of this is that I have to be near my phone to answer the call, but this is not usually a problem. Of course, if you have a separate phone line that you can dedicate to your fax, then you can just set the fax software to received faxes automatically and leave it to its business!

The great thing about FaxSTF is that I can convert the fax to a PDF. If I need to fill it out and return it, I simply do so in Acrobat and then email or fax it back.

Sending faxes

If I need to fax off a document that I've created in Word or other program, I simply use the Print command. I choose the FaxSTF printer driver instead of my normal printer, fill in the fax number if it's not already in my address book, and click on the Fax button.

There are times, however, when I only have a hard copy of a document to send or it's easier to fill in a form by hand. In those cases, I use my scanner to create a digital copy and then use the Print command as above.

Needless to say, if I didn't already have a scanner, then it certainly wouldn't be worth my going out to buy one just so I can fax the odd document. Luckily, I use a scanner for all sorts of miscellaneous jobs, so it's not an issue for me.

So, if you already have a scanner and/or Acrobat, you would certainly find that using faxing software will save you having to maintain yet another machine on your already cluttered desktop, not to mention having to keep up your supplies of fax paper or toner.