Receiving Faxes with your computer – the easy way

Yes it is possible to send & receive faxes through the computer. There are several ways to do it. One is even built in to Mac OS X. Of course, to send a regular fax requires a phone line connected to the computer. Until recently all Macs had a built in modem port.

For sending a fax; basically anything you can print, you can fax. The sending fax machine can show up as if it was a printer. This usually looks a lot better than a regular fax machine too. It turns out the the crappy fax quality is not to fax printer, but the fax scanner.

When I send faxes, I usually use a 3rd party program because I like it better, and I was sending a lot of faxes way back then, so the $40 was worth it at the time. That software is “Page Sender” from smileonmymac.com

Another more expensive, but networkable software is 4-Sight Fax. It works pretty well if the modem supports all the necessary stuff. The Zoom USB modems do.

For receiving, I don’t use my own computer. Just like with a regular fax machine. too many things can go wrong, and I don’t have a dedicated fax line here at the home office. I do have an eFax account which includes my own dedicated free fax number. They offer a free 30 day trial, so you can check it out for free.

Anyway, when anybody sends me a fax to my fax number, EFax receives it for me, then emails it to me as an attachment. That works pretty well. I can use either their eFax Messenger, the iOS app, or GraphicConverter to open those & convert to PDF. No problem.

I still keep a stand-alone fax machine around, although I don’t use it much. It can come in handy if I need to fax a piece of paper, rather than fax something I can print.

When I am sending a fax, I do it as a “print to fax” where the fax software shows up as if it was a real printer. And it wort of is, if you think of it as a real printer that is far away.

That’s how I do it, there are other ways too. Here’s a button to push for your FREE FAX TRIAL. If you are interested in an easy way to receive (& send) faxes, give it a try.