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"Do You Still Need a Fax Machine?"

There’s a classic moment in the comedy Office Space where three frustrated employees finally take revenge on their ever-jamming and error-spewing fax machine with a baseball bat. This scene is funny in large part because a lot of people can honestly sympathize with these three beleaguered office workers and their rebellion against a flawed technology that never quite seems to work as advertised--and in fact seems to have been invented with the sole purpose of making already difficult jobs even harder.

Fax-stomping scene from "Office Space"

Let's face it. Fax machines are slow, costly, and wasteful--that is, when they actually work. But one thing that's easy to forget in this day and age is how old the fax machine is as technology. Fax machines are basically 1960’s technology, a technology that hasn’t changed significantly in nearly 50 years. If the fax machine doesn't quite meet our demands today, is there any wonder? It's really a testament to the fax machine that it has hung around as long as it has, and I'm sure back in the '60's it was an impressive piece of engineering. And they do serve a critical purpose.

There is a need, an important one, to convert hardcopy into electronic form and then transport it to a remote location, minus the footwork, postage, or gas mileage, and to do so in a relatively speedy manner. Fax machines serve that purpose. So maybe it’s simply the case that they are necessarily evils and that we are all stuck with them for the better or worse.

Thankfully this isn't the case.

Big business has known this for years and the smart ones got rid of their fax machines a long time ago. They use pricey software like RightFax, running off a server on their network, to send and receive faxes directly from and to their computers. But there are many companies out there that provide the same type of service and that are well within the budget of any small business. EFax is a well-known example, but there are many others, sometimes offering better values.

Let's say, for example, that for $15.00 a month, you can send or receive 1000 fax pages—directly from your computer, no paper involved. Anything over 1000 pages will cost you maybe 3 or 5 cents per page. Take this and compare it to your current costs using a standard fax machine. Take the cost of the fax machine itself, the cost of the paper, toner cartridges, maintenance, and fax line—in other words, the total cost of ownership. That $15.00 starts to look pretty inviting, especially when you consider the fact that there's no longer really anything to break down, jam, or spit error messages. And when waiting for that critical fax, you won't need to worry about a fellow coworker walking off with it, only to toss it into the garbage the moment he realizes it wasn't meant for him.

What will you need besides a subscription to a faxing service? You'll need a scanner to convert your hardcopy to electronic format (i.e., PDF or TIFF). Most current copier machines will do this nicely. Document scanners are built for this. On the smaller end, most inexpensive multifunction printers will have this capability as well if your faxing load is fairly modest.

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