GoFaxer Blog

Did you know that the one of the best and easiest things you can do for your business is to get rid of your fax machine? I know. Fax machines are a staple of the modern era office. But it’s a new world my friends. The Internet is here, and it’s time to move on.

“But I still have clients who use fax machines,” you say. Well, don’t worry about that. There’s now something called Internet fax that lets us send and receive faxes without using a fax machine. Rather than using the phone line, it’s all done through the Internet connection.

It’s faster than fax. You can send and receive more than one fax at one time. And compared with the cost of the machine, the upkeep expense, and the cost of supplies, it’s much less expensive. It doesn’t even require the downloading of software. It’s all-accessible online with your browser.

Fax machines are going extinct. So don’t keep spending money on a dead horse. Give it a nice funeral and bury it. You can have a little ceremony outside of your office. Invite a few coworkers to say a few kind words. And say goodbye to your old friend. You won’t miss it.

I found a recent article at Ezine Articles by Rache Young that outlines some very obvious and basic benefits to using email fax over the traditional fax machine.

She first discusses the mainstream uses of the fax machine in the 1980’s:

“With the invention of the fax machine, all you had to do was place your document on a fax machine, dial the phone number of another fax machine anywhere in the world, and by the magic of technology the document would come out on the other side looking just like it did when you sent it.”

This operation was quite remarkable for it’s time. We had gone a long way since the Pony Express. Now we could send documents in minutes over the phone line.

But things got even faster in the 1990’s. Now everyone was sending info in seconds through the Internet. Young says:

“With today’s advanced technology a simple computer, with an Internet connection, is all that is required to send your email to fax machine documents to anywhere in the world.”

The biggest advantage to email fax is it’s cost savings. You don’t have to purchase fax machines anymore. And you save time since the new technology is faster. You don’t need a dedicated line anymore simply for faxes. No more long distance phone charges. Once again, technology is proving a boon to businesses wanting greater efficiency and greater cost savings.

Fax technology was a great technology. That is, up until about 10 years ago when the world discovered the wonders of the Internet. We discovered that sending a fax through telephone line seemed almost archaic.

Suddenly, we weren’t content just having one line of communication with another human being. We discovered that we wanted multiple avenues of communication open at the same time.

We discovered that we wanted multiple windows open on our computer screen giving us the latest stock quotes, the latest news on the presidential election, a podcast downloading through iTunes, Internet radio playing music, our homework assignment for business school on a Word document, and finally, a financial analysis from work on an Excel spreadsheet. We wanted multiple applications up and running all at once, giving us a constant feed of information.

So you can imagine how frustrated we get now when we can only send one fax through the phone line at a time. But now technology has fixed that problem as well. Through fax to email services we can send and receive multiple faxes at the same time. It’s just like the Internet—constant, mobile, and simultaneous. It’s the wave of the future.

So it’s time to switch from the technology that used to be great to the one that’s great now.

An Ezine Article by Paton Jackson raises the question: Is fax technology dead? He explains:

“Till now, you had to own a special machine – a fax machine, which was only made to send and receive faxes. Now using internet fax or as some call it email faxing, you need no special device for faxes – You can send and receive faxes via your email.”

The simple fact is that the technology that has been a common necessity in every office setting for every type of business, large or small, is no longer necessary. With Internet fax it’s all as easy as receiving and sending emails. No more standing in line at the fax machine.

The challenge though during this transitional period is that there are still many businesses that are dependent on the older technology. It becomes necessary for all businesses to be able to do both, send faxes and emails. This is where companies like GoFaxer are so amazing. If you’re sending a fax to someone who has email fax, they will receive it in email form. If you’re sending it to a company that has an old-fashioned fax machine, they will receive it on printed paper.

So in a sense, faxing is still alive. It’s just transitioned into an internet form that crosses both technologies and makes both compatible with one another.