Places that still use faxes, Grrr.. PC solution

[jim584672]

Dealing with medical type situations and they tell you, just fax it to us. I am thinking what year is this? How do I send a fax with no landline? Library wants a dollar a page, nope. Online faxing services I give up my private info, nope.

Solution, find an old laptop with a phone jack. Amazingly I have one. Windows 10 has a fax and scan program. I turned the scan into a PDF and attached it to the fax and scan program. No landline, but I do have magicJack with a regular phone attached. So I give it a try, plug the line to the laptop, and it works! A working fax machine in 2021.

 

[Montecfo]

I have a landline and it certainly is helpful for faxing medical and sometimes legal docs.

And my printer is a fax.

It is for security. That's why medical folks use it.

 

[jim584672]

I have a landline and it certainly is helpful for faxing medical and sometimes legal docs.

And my printer is a fax.

It is for security. That's why medical folks use it.

It would be so much easier for them to do this via encryption and email. That is too complex for them I guess.

 

[Montecfo]

It would be so much easier for them to do this via encryption and email. That is too complex for them I guess.

Financial institutions do. But medical orgs are not.known for tech savvy.

 

[Sunset]

DW ensures about every 8-10 yrs when I buy a new printer I get a laser:

1. print,
2. copy,
3. scan,
4. fax

capable one, this year I had to fax many documents about 100 pages in total so it was really handy.

Normally we fax 2x per year.

 

[RobbieB]

Yup. I bit the bullet and bought a color laser printer, copier, scanner, fax. Now only $400.

Wonderful how electronics are counter inflationary. These used to be expensive.

 

[jim584672]

I'm amazed you all are paying for a landline. I got rid of that years ago. So many alternate ways to phone now with VOIP, and cell phones, Internet.

 

[ModestNestEgg]

Towards the beginning of my career, in the late 1990s, I probably sent 2-3 faxes a day. Now, I am asked to fax something once a year at most.

But it's usually a medical office or an insurance office who still asks that information be sent that way.

 

[Aerides]

There are a lot of tools that convert email to fax, and vice versa. Fax is never going away.

I was having this convo in my MC 10 years ago, trying to get us to adopt more flexible tools and the brass were all "lol fax who uses that anymore...." ... Um we do ...1million pages a month in and out. That's when they said oh... ok... and started listening.

Until the security and regulations are updated, fax will remain.

 

[jazz4cash]

More like 40 cents per page.

Recommend Fax for iPhone
https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/showthread.php?t=110157

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

Heck, Box.com is FedRAMP compliant, although I guess if your patients aren't trained in security, that would be the weak point. But I do like how I can upload documents to USAA and Fidelity, and I think Medstar Medical has that capability; I know I can get test results on their patient portal.

 

[Jerry1]

I have a fax machine via my printer but no land line. This post is making me wonder if I could plug something like magic Jack into the printer and make it work. Like many, it’s rare that I need to fax, but when I do need to it’s usually important and a PITA.

 

[mpeirce]

I think I’ve had to send one fax in the last 10(?) years. I just went down to FedEx (Kinkos) and used theirs.

 

[audreyh1]

Dealing with medical type situations and they tell you, just fax it to us. I am thinking what year is this? How do I send a fax with no landline? Library wants a dollar a page, nope. Online faxing services I give up my private info, nope.

Solution, find an old laptop with a phone jack. Amazingly I have one. Windows 10 has a fax and scan program. I turned the scan into a PDF and attached it to the fax and scan program. No landline, but I do have magicJack with a regular phone attached. So I give it a try, plug the line to the laptop, and it works! A working fax machine in 2021.

We don’t have a landline at all. Not an option here. I’d have to go to a hotel room or something.

For financial documents I consider a fax service to be a security issue. My docs are scanned into some memory.

Otherwise I’d happily pay the library $1 a page. They probably need the funds.

I don’t have a magic jack.

 

[Montecfo]

I'm amazed you all are paying for a landline. I got rid of that years ago. So many alternate ways to phone now with VOIP, and cell phones, Internet.

Well, it seems like cheap insurance. Cell towers down, copper wire still works. Power outage, copper wire still works. Need to send a fax, copper wire sends it securely.

 

[ERD50]

Well, it seems like cheap insurance. Cell towers down, copper wire still works. Power outage, copper wire still works. ... .

Is this still true? I switched to VOIP long ago (DEC2007), it's my understanding that most copper gets converted to VOIP pretty early in the chain.

But maybe all that equipment has power back up?

-ERD50

 

[niven]

I also have an all-in-one printer with fax capability and use it with Ooma VOIP. It works fine when I have a rare use for it.

 

[MRG]

It would be so much easier for them to do this via encryption and email. That is too complex for them I guess.

I takes decades for "new" technologies to make their way into medical, legal, and financial institutions. My career was in technology and I dealt with this on a regular basis.

The regulators honestly don't have a clue what occurs in the real world. According to the SEC documents that are scanned into financial services are read and compared with the original before they are processed. That worked in early 1989.

 

[Bryan Barnfellow]

Is efax.com still in business? I used them in the 1990s/early 2000s and it worked quite well. There was a monthly page limit in the free version. Check it out as a simple solution.

-BB

 

[sengsational]

I use faxzero. They know my email address and the phone number I fax to, and the name I assign as the recipient. They might do OCR to read the contents of the fax, but I don't think their business model requires that; free for 2 pages or so, and a buck or two for more. I use the free all the time (if a the time means once a year, when I run into a process still in the stone age), but every so often, I need to send more pages, and pay. Oops, now they have my PayPal.

 

[Sojourner]

I use faxzero. They know my email address and the phone number I fax to, and the name I assign as the recipient. They might do OCR to read the contents of the fax, but I don't think their business model requires that; free for 2 pages or so, and a buck or two for more. I use the free all the time (if a the time means once a year, when I run into a process still in the stone age), but every so often, I need to send more pages, and pay. Oops, now they have my PayPal.

+1

FaxZero has been around for ages and works really well. I still use it on the (very) rare occasions I need to send a fax.

 

[Yoheadden]

I have a landline and it certainly is helpful for faxing medical and sometimes legal docs.

And my printer is a fax.

It is for security. That's why medical folks use it.

+1

I am doing the Probate for my FIL. I was surprised how many institutions would either send or accept documents via fax instead of email. They all said it was more secure. The other option was snail mail, which seems twice as slow when dealing with legal/financial/medical forms.

 

[Car-Guy]

Don't trust fax machines and what's retained in memory... (I could tell you a story from my working years) Much prefer to scan and send electronic attachments... At least I know what was sent to who, and when it was sent.

 

[bigreader]

I have used HelloFax to send a fax via computer. Worked well for my limited needs.
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[jollystomper]

Is efax.com still in business? I used them in the 1990s/early 2000s and it worked quite well. There was a monthly page limit in the free version. Check it out as a simple solution.
-BB

They are still around. They now have an app that allows you to send faxes from your cell phone. It can be as easy as taking a picture of what you want to fax and using the app to send it.

They charge, but, like other competing apps that also provide this function, might have a trial/free for low usage option.