Office Fax Challenge

[Jonny]

Good day everyone, I have a quick question to run by all you computer experts.

What I was wondering is, is it possible to setup a fax machine in an office where people in the office can print to from there own personal computers over the network? So basically, everyone shares one fax machine, and I was hoping this could be a computer system using a modem, and somehow people on the network could print to it like a regular printer, except able to specifiy a phone number.

This would save a lot of paper and time since we wouldn't have to print our documents first, we could just fax them. There must be some type of software avaible to do this right?

Thanks a lot, I appriciate any input!

 

[DaveSimmons]

Google on "fax server" there used to be several companies offering products, no idea what's there now.

 

[a2k]

Yep. You can have a PC with a fax modem installed. Set up the fax as a shared printer. Everyone else just connects to the printer. Got it setup that way at home with WinXP.

There are some more robust solutions that will do fax blasting over multiple channels if your volume gets too high.

 

[Jonny]

How do they specify what phone number to dial to when printing from a different computer?

 

[a2k]

Originally posted by: Jonny
How do they specify what phone number to dial to when printing from a different computer?

If they're using WinXP, there's a fax wizard that walks them through the process, from entering the fax # (or choosing a contact from your contacts) to creating a coverpage. Don't know about other OS's, but I'd imagine there's something similar.