When A Fax Is No Longer Just A Fax

Do you remember the first fax machine you ever saw in action?
My first experience of one was at a freight office that I used to work for close to Heathrow. It truly was something else.
Located as discreetly as could be under the circumstances beside the photocopier, it was about the size of a small car. When originals were fed into it the machinery it sprang into action, the document spinning crazily around a barrel-shaped mechanism with a high-pitched noise whining in the background and pungent, toxic fumes pervading the office as it passed slowly through the laborious ten-minute process while everyone else opened the windows and gasped for air.
The fax machine has of course moved on somewhat since then. Mostly they can be transported from one place to another without depending on the services of a forklift truck. They are usually cheap, inexpensive to operate and clean, other than when the toner needs to changing and the process doesn't quite run as smoothly as it ought.
But there are still many drawbacks. What happens when you need to receive a fax and you are somewhere other than where the fax machine happens to be? What do you do when you are awaiting an important document and someone else decides they need to send you the contents of their latest 100-page catalogue?
What happens indeed when, as is invariably the case, you are waiting on something vitally important and the toner expires?
Recently I came across a very interesting solution in the form of a service called Fax2mail. The concept is actually blissfully simple. You're issued with a unique telephone number, faxes are sent to you as faxes and arrive with you in the form of e-mails, which you can then collect wherever you have access to the Internet and print off, if printed off they must be, at your own convenience.
Oh, and did I mention you don't actually have to pay anything?
Technology continues to move along at an alarming rate. No longer does the ability to receive a fax require you to rent extra office space. And what's more, now it doesn't break the bank either.

View this post on my blog: http://www.hpprinterfax.com/when-a-fax-is-no-longer-just-a-fax/