Recommendations on a good fax program for the PC?

[blurredvision]

At work, we've been spending a lot of money lately on ink ribbons for the damned fax machine. It's getting rediculous the amount of faxes that are coming through nowadays. The boss wants me to find a solution to this, in the form of a program that will receive the faxes for us, and allow us to print them at our discretion.

A couple of pointers:

• Paying for the program is not a problem. We want professional.
• Must be very good at receiving faxes, as that's what we'll mainly use it for.
• Must include very good organization of incoming faxes. We need to easily be able to sort through faxes waiting, print what we need, delete what we don't want, and possibly save what we want records of.

I appreciate any suggestions you guys can give, as I've never had to delve into the world of fax programs before. Whatever you recommend just has to work, and make me look as good as possible .

 

[BlueWeasel]

The only two fax programs I know of are WinFax Pro and Bitware Fax.

 

[Nocturnal]

At the bank where I got a loan from I saw them receiving faxes through Outlook. I've always wondered how they were doing that.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
At the bank where I got a loan from I saw them receiving faxes through Outlook. I've always wondered how they were doing that.

Not sure about that exactly, but you can sign up for fax service through email. Basically, you're given a dedicated number that people can use for faxes. Any faxes you receive are converted to a common format (usually PDF) and emailed to you. For faxes you need to sent, you sent an email to the address given to you, and the attachments are converted and faxed to the number you specific in the email message. All of this without having a fax machine nor a dedicated phone line.

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
At the bank where I got a loan from I saw them receiving faxes through Outlook. I've always wondered how they were doing that.

Not sure about that exactly, but you can sign up for fax service through email. Basically, you're given a dedicated number that people can use for faxes. Any faxes you receive are converted to a common format (usually PDF) and emailed to you. For faxes you need to sent, you sent an email to the address given to you, and the attachments are converted and faxed to the number you specific in the email message. All of this without having a fax machine nor a dedicated phone line.

Is this service typically associated with your ISP, or is it a web thing? This actually sounds fantastic, but I would imagine the cost would be more than what we're spending on ink ribbons.

 

[nweaver]

There are many many many fax servers. Lanfax and Faxination are 2 such solutions. I think lanfax will integrate with outlook and such. As a warning, some of those REQUIRE a rather expensive brooktrout board. Both are ones I have used, and work well, they are an "enterprise" level solution.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: blurredvision
Is this service typically associated with your ISP, or is it a web thing? This actually sounds fantastic, but I would imagine the cost would be more than what we're spending on ink ribbons.

No, I don't think any of them are ISP based.

Here's a FAQ that might be useful:
http://www.savetz.com/fax/#cani

Since you are really just interested in faxes received, then you could go with a service that can only receives faxes thru email (no sending).

Packetel has a flat fee of $4.00 per month for unlimited pages delivered as TIFF images to your email. I've never used it before, but the user reviews were pretty high.
http://www.savetz.com/fax/receive_fax.php

 

[episodic]

Mighty Fax. http://www.rkssoftware.com/mightyfax/overview.html

It is an excellent program. I use it with my business. Only 19 bucks. It works great to send and recieve. Really an excellent program.

Quoted from site:
To receive faxes, Mighty Fax must first be put into "receive mode". While it is in receive mode, it will answer all incoming calls, fax or not. If you plan to have Mighty Fax constantly in receive mode, it is best to have a separate telephone line.

Received faxes are stored in the Incoming fax table and may be viewed and printed at any time. You can keep them for as long as you like, or delete them when no longer needed.

Please note: Your fax number is whichever number the faxmodem is plugged into. We do not assign fax numbers.

 

[blurredvision]

I really like episodic's suggestion. We really need to keep our current fax number, as it's been used for quite some time, and our customers know it by now.

Anyone else with a suggestion?

 

[Homerboy]

Alt-n makes a tremendous product for faxing (send and receive) called relayfax. We use it specifically for autogoing so our employees can send directly from their desktops, but from what I understand the incoming works perfectly fine too.