10 Reasons We Still Need To Fax

If you don't want to receive faxes on an old machine, you don't have to. You can get an Internet "phone number" for that, or use an e-mail- or Web-based service for receiving them. However, millions upon millions of individuals and businesses still have fax machines, so there are at least 10 reasons we still need to fax to others. Let's take a quick look.Whether you are going to use a standalone machine or rely on one of the new Internet-based services (e-mail or browser type), the fact remains that broadband service has changed the fax landscape dramatically since the days of dial-up accounts. Standalone machines have been integrated into the same "web" of services that has subsumed all other communications, too.The conventional technique, of course, is rather cumbersome and costly. There are consumables - ink, toner, paper, electricity, etc. - that cost money, and the time people have to muck around with the paper path and the push buttons is lost to other tasks (this is ca
lled "opportunity cost"). Therefore, just because you need to fax doesn't mean you have to do it with an old, costly technology.Modern faxingToday's Internet fax services are easy to use, more efficient and even more reliable. It does not take any genius to figure out why they are becoming popular. While saving yourself over 90% of the cost by using an Internet service, you can still reach the tens of millions of people who are using fax machines, particularly overseas. The computer platform gives you a way to easily save your outgoing faxes, too, letting your review your history with a few mouse clicks and retrieve documents with ease.As the user and strategizer of your new fax communications protocol, you will reduce your use of paper and consumables and make the most of the eco-friendly and "green" nature of the new services. You are also more mobile than before, in that you do not have to be near a particular machine to send a fax. As long as you can sign on to your Web
fax service account, you can manage these communications from anywhere - from an airport lounge with your smart phone, or a hotel from their guest computer in the lobby.List time!In no particular order, then, here are the 10 reasons we still need to fax:1. There are tens of millions of fax machines still operating in the world, many of them the main communications portal (particularly overseas). Stop faxing and you lose lots of marketing, sales or contact opportunities.2. Speed is often of the essence, and there is no quicker way to get a schematic into someone else's hands than faxing. Even if you scan and send an e-mail, this requires extra steps, which means extra time. When you have no extra time, faxing is wonderfully direct.3. Not everyone is computer-literate - really! Although veteran PC and Mac users always assume that everyone else is as "geeked out" as they are, it is not true. Whether on the sending or receiving end, there are still plenty of people who can opera
te a fax machine but don't know to even turn on a computer. This matters more and more the farther you are from a technologically advanced region.4. Faxing is still important in the aforementioned sense of mobility and access. If you are on the road and need to contact someone who only has a fax machine for document receipt, you are going to want either (a) access to a nearby office store or post office box rental firm and its fax machines or (b) a WiFi- or 3G-connected smart phone with and Internet fax account.5. For security, nothing beats being on the phone with recipients as they watch your fax arrive on their machine. They will know with 100% certainty that they and they alone are seeing this document on the receiving end. There will be no digital copy stored in memory, like e-mails are, and no way to know what was on the faxed page.6. No software conflicts will ruin your day when you send to a fax machine. It won't matter if the recipient has Microsoft Word or not. The
document will be readable because it will be replicated from a real, printed item.7. Some scanned images are huge in (digital) size and can be refused by some e-mail servers. Faxed images have that analog advantage of being small in size whether they are pictures of balloons or jam-packed schematics.8. If you are on the phone as someone receives an e-mail with an attachment, it will take a while to get an answer to the question 'did you get the fax?' With a real piece of paper being cranked out by a real machine, recipients of faxes can say yes, and right away.9. There is a basic human need for tactile feedback. This is the reason that movies still sell on DVD instead of just via downloads. Some people just like to have the proof right in their hands, where they can feel it.10. Faxes are anonymous if you want them to be, or at least circumspect. E-mail will show the sender and the address. You can configure your outgoing faxes to arrive without so much as a phone number on
them. This helps in security, and also keeps people you didn't send the document to from "mining" your e-mail or Web addresses.

View this post on my blog: http://www.hpprinterfax.com/10-reasons-we-still-need-to-fax/