FAX All in One Advice

[Boris]

I need a fax machine and have to share it on my voice land line. I don't
want to bring in a new line and pay monthly fees, since the fax will be
used very, very little.

I prefer to get an all in one printer with fax, even though I have all of
the other printer functions in many machines around the house. I was
looking the Canon Pixma MX700, but when I read reviews, it sometimes it
picks up the voice line when people are talking on the line, and this
problem is acknowledged by Canon, about this model, and other Canon fax
capable models. I then looked at fax only devices, and I see some of the
same complaints.

Can anyone suggest an all in one with fax, or, if I have to, a fax only
machine? A must have is a document feeder. Price range is up to $150 or
so.

Thanks.

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

Can anyone suggest an all in one with fax,

Anything Brother. Seriously good machines. I've had the 7820N for
awhile now. Great stuff. Cheap ink off Ebay. Rock solid performer.

 

[Boris]

My suggestion is NOT to do it;
Here is why.
With many of the so called all in one printers you cannot selectively
print specific faxes. You need to print them all in a series or print
none of them. That was the case with some of the older Canons. I do
not know about the latest but they cause the user to waste more ink on
stuff they did not want to begin with.

Thanks, understood.

Here is my suggestion:

Get fax software and have your computer answer the phone. Then you
can delete the spam and print what you want.

That was my first inclination, but the recipients specifically do not
want electronic faxes. They require paper faxes.

 

[LF]

Anything Brother.  Seriously good machines.  I've had the 7820N for
awhile now.  Great stuff.  Cheap ink off Ebay.  Rock solid performer.

Elmo.

I have the same good experience with the Brother 7820N, and other
Brother laser all-in-one printers. I have one at home, two Brother
laser all-in-ones for the office, and got one for my daughter at
college. The *N* indicates that it functions as a *network* printer.
I got mostly refurbs, and they work great! I got inexpensive, high
quality, toner from internet sellers -- works fine. In Brother
printers, the starter toner cartridge did not have a reset switch.
However, the replacement toner cartridges (from internet sellers) were
easily and inexpensively refillable.

I don't have direct experience with other laser all-in-ones, because
I've liked Brothers enough to stick with a good thing.

Best,
Larry

 

[Mary]

Anything Brother. Seriously good machines. I've had the 7820N for
awhile now. Great stuff. Cheap ink off Ebay. Rock solid performer.

I was going to ask the same question as I am also interested in people's
experiences with all in one with fax or maybe without fax if its a good
multi function machine. I would also like to know with all-in- one machines,
does it cost a lot more money to maintain than a printer by itself, since
you use the ink not just for a printer but for copying and faxing? Or does
the fax have a cartridge of its own? Ink cartridges are expensive enough
just for a printer. I don't use a fax or copier too much but multi function
machines have improved in quality and are lower in price than they used to
be.

Mary

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

I would also like to know with all-in- one machines,
does it cost a lot more money to maintain than a printer by itself, since
you use the ink not just for a printer but for copying and faxing? Or does
the fax have a cartridge of its own? Ink cartridges are expensive enough
just for a printer. I don't use a fax or copier too much but multi function
machines have improved in quality and are lower in price than they used to
be.

I do laser, I don't do inkjets. Inkjets are expensive to operate and
the ink dries out just when you need it most.

The idea behind an all-in-one is that you have one single print engine
and one single scanner. You can mix and match their use in any way.
Print using the print engine, scan using the scanner, send documents
over the telephone using the scanner and the fax functionality, receive
documents from telephone using the printer and the fax functionality, or
copy using the scanner and the printer.

When I bought the Brother 7820N (N for network, as in network printing,
network faxing, and network scanning for all computers hooked to the
network), color laser all-in-one wasn't very popular or available. Now
it is. My next all in one will be color and still laser.

 

[IntergalacticExpandingPanda]

Can anyone suggest an all in one with fax, or, if I have to, a fax only
machine?  A must have is a document feeder.  Price range is up to $150 or
so.

Really the way to go if possible is a service like e-fax. Inbound
faxes go to e-mail as a PDF. You can read or print as you wish. If
it goes to a g-mail or other type service, you have the ability to get
this stuff on the road. Service is free for inbound faxes but you
don't an inbound number with area code. There are services other
than e-fax, but for my rare fax needs, which is under a few faxes/
year, efax does the trick.

Sharing a voice line is tricky at the best of times.

This being said I have the mp830. It lacks network like the mp700 but
is higher resolution for photos. It also lacks the medium nozzles the
mx850 has. Text is virtually identical on all these models.

To be honest I think the cheap mp830s are all gone.

The mp530 on the other hand still seem to be floating around. Amazon
has them for $100. No network, and not as large a printhead as the
mp830/mx850 but this shouldn't be a real issue if your primary
application is fax.

My direct experience with fax line sharing was with HP models, the
last one a psc 900 from like 8 years ago. It did the trick, I could
hit a few buttons on my phone and get it to pick up.

 

[Boris]

IntergalacticExpandingPanda <[email protected]>
wrote in

Really the way to go if possible is a service like e-fax. Inbound
faxes go to e-mail as a PDF. You can read or print as you wish. If
it goes to a g-mail or other type service, you have the ability to get
this stuff on the road. Service is free for inbound faxes but you
don't an inbound number with area code. There are services other
than e-fax, but for my rare fax needs, which is under a few faxes/
year, efax does the trick.

Sharing a voice line is tricky at the best of times.

That's my fear.

This being said I have the mp830. It lacks network like the mp700 but
is higher resolution for photos. It also lacks the medium nozzles the
mx850 has. Text is virtually identical on all these models.

To be honest I think the cheap mp830s are all gone.

The mp530 on the other hand still seem to be floating around. Amazon
has them for $100. No network, and not as large a printhead as the
mp830/mx850 but this shouldn't be a real issue if your primary
application is fax.

My direct experience with fax line sharing was with HP models, the
last one a psc 900 from like 8 years ago. It did the trick, I could
hit a few buttons on my phone and get it to pick up.

When you say you could hit a few buttons on your phone, do you mean that
you had to be home and know that a fax was coming in, or do you mean
that you could configure the machine so it would pick up a fax
unattended?

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

Sharing a voice line is tricky at the best of times.

For rare times of faxing? No it's not. It's trivial.

 

[Don Phillipson]

That was my first inclination, but the recipients specifically do not
want electronic faxes. They require paper faxes.

You may have misunderstood. . . Fax software (e.g. Symantec
WinFax) sends paper faxes to recipients' fax machines -- and
on demand can receive and save to disk faxes sent to your
single phone line (for you to print later if you wish.) Fax
software is all you need.

 

[measekite]

Thanks, understood.

That was my first inclination, but the recipients specifically do not
want electronic faxes. They require paper faxes.

It is actually the same thing. Once a fax leaves your AIO it is
electronic and when the AIO prints it is paper. Same with the computer.

 

[measekite]

Really the way to go if possible is a service like e-fax. Inbound
faxes go to e-mail as a PDF. You can read or print as you wish. If
it goes to a g-mail or other type service, you have the ability to get
this stuff on the road. Service is free for inbound faxes but you
don't an inbound number with area code. There are services other
than e-fax, but for my rare fax needs, which is under a few faxes/
year, efax does the trick.

NOW THAT IS AN EWASTE OF TIME.

Sharing a voice line is tricky at the best of times.

Maybe for you but not for others.

This being said I have the mp830. It lacks network like the mp700 but
is higher resolution for photos. It also lacks the medium nozzles the
mx850 has. Text is virtually identical on all these models.

To be honest I think the cheap mp830s are all gone. Terrific

The mp530 on the other hand still seem to be floating around. Amazon
has them for $100. No network, and not as large a printhead as the
mp830/mx850 but this shouldn't be a real issue if your primary
application is fax.

Do not get that.

My direct experience with fax line sharing was with HP models, the
last one a psc 900 from like 8 years ago. It did the trick, I could
hit a few buttons on my phone and get it to pick up.

Now that as usual is a dissertation.

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

Really the way to go if possible is a service like e-fax. Inbound
faxes go to e-mail as a PDF. You can read or print as you wish. If
it goes to a g-mail or other type service, you have the ability to get
this stuff on the road. Service is free for inbound faxes but you
don't an inbound number with area code. There are services other
than e-fax, but for my rare fax needs, which is under a few faxes/
year, efax does the trick.

NOW THAT IS AN EWASTE OF TIME.[/QUOTE]

Why?

 

[Boris]

You may have misunderstood. . . Fax software (e.g. Symantec
WinFax) sends paper faxes to recipients' fax machines -- and
on demand can receive and save to disk faxes sent to your
single phone line (for you to print later if you wish.) Fax
software is all you need.

Hi, Don,

Oh. You may be right...I may not be clear on the mechanism of
transmittal. What I'm trying to avoid is an electronic copy (a file)
left on a computer that can easily be distributed. That would include
an electronic copy left with/by either the sender or receiver.

When using paper fax machines, there's no electronic file left behind.
I compare it to how much easier it is to distribute an email file as
opposed to a hand written letter delivered by the post office.

I will be sending and receiving legal and medical documents. Already,
one medical professional would not accept emails with attached pdfs, so
I had to go to UPS to fax the documents.

Am I correct in my thinking?

Thanks.

 

[IntergalacticExpandingPanda]

Hi, Don,

Oh. You may be right...I may not be clear on the mechanism of
transmittal.  What I'm trying to avoid is an electronic copy (a file)
left on a computer that can easily be distributed.  That would include
an electronic copy left with/by either the sender or receiver.

When using paper fax machines, there's no electronic file left behind.
I compare it to how much easier it is to distribute an email file as
opposed to a hand written letter delivered by the post office.

I will be sending and receiving legal and medical documents.  Already,
one medical professional would not accept emails with attached pdfs, so
I had to go to UPS to fax the documents.

Am I correct in my thinking?

Thanks.

Winfax is ok, but I find that default fax support in microsoft windows
win95 to winxp is pretty good. sent faxes and received faxes are by
default are saved as .tif documents but this can easily be fixed.

You can easily send a pdf to a fax machine, it comes out as a paper
document.

If you absolutely want paper, that's up to you. There could be good
reasons to do this, however they can't whether a given document that
spat out on the other end was from a PC file faxed, or a PC file
printed then faxed.

The problem with this logic is everything is electronic already.
Printing it to paper then faxing it doesn't make it any more secure.
In fact, there are tricks you can do to make sure that a given fax is
an original rather than a copy which won't work if you fax paper.

But ultimately the choice is yours, as long as you are aware of the
alternatives.

 

[Don Phillipson]

What I'm trying to avoid is an electronic copy (a file)
left on a computer that can easily be distributed. That would include
an electronic copy left with/by either the sender or receiver.

WinFax and MS Fax both save electronic copies of faxes
and in and out but IIRR both can be configured (1) in which
folder to save the copies, (2) in which format e.g. TIF.

So these copies can be routinely deleted by a single batch file
run at the end of each working day:
DEL D:\Faxfolder\*.*

Of course traces remain on the hard drive, that adepts
could reconstruct, until their filespace (marked empty by
the FAT or NTSC after DELetion) gets overwritten by some
other fille: but this would be so for any variety of fax software.

 

[Bennett Price]

Since you've got enough computer printers already, why not buy just a
cheap fax machine? The Brother 575 often sells for as little as $20.

 

[Michael Johnson]

I would never buy the crap ink from nobodies on ebay.

..... but you dole out crap advice daily that nobody takes. You are an
idiot.