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From: Mike Easter on 17 Jul 2010 21:21
Mike Easter wrote:

> <Seinfeld> Not that there's anything wrong with that. <S6d/>

Oops. I used my numeronym closure syntax incorrectly. The slash should
go in front of the S6d.

<Seinfeld> Not that there's anything wrong with that. </S6d>


--
Mike Easter
From: VegasDon on 17 Jul 2010 23:39
On Jul 17, 2:25 pm, JD <J...(a)No-where.con> wrote:
> Hey Experts  :-)
>
> I have a fax in my PC and use it often to send faxes.
>
> It can accept faxes too but only when I set it to do
> that. If it is not set, it does not answer. When
> it is set
> to take them, no other calls can get through.
>
> Is there any such thing as a little prog for the
> PC that
> can recognize fax tones and answer the fax calls.
>
> TIA

Get rid of all the problems. Send PDF files in your email. Scan the
info, send it as an attachment and none of this difficulty will
exist. It is the same as faxing, is 24 hours a day and seven days a
week. If they want a hard copy they just hit print. I use a free
program called cutePDF.

Don in Las Vegas
From: JD on 18 Jul 2010 13:35
VanguardLH wrote:
> JD wrote:
>
>> Hey Experts :-)
>>
>> I have a fax in my PC and use it often to send faxes.
>>
>> It can accept faxes too but only when I set it to do
>> that. If it is not set, it does not answer. When
>> it is set
>> to take them, no other calls can get through.
>>
>> Is there any such thing as a little prog for the
>> PC that
>> can recognize fax tones and answer the fax calls.
>>
>> TIA
>
> But to see if there are fax tones REQUIRES that the line be picked up
> and listened to. That means answering the call to check for the tones.
> Now what if there aren't any tones? Then switch to the phone line to
> ring the telephone.
>
> I haven't used WinFax or other fax software for about a decade. No
> point to them anymore since the Fax Service is included in Windows (as
> of XP). However, most fax modems don't have all the logic mentioned
> above to answer (pickup) the line, issue bogus ring tones to the caller
> during which your end listens for fax tones and then transfers to the
> fax modem if there are some or transfers to the phone if there aren't.
> While the line gets picked up, you have to pretend to the caller that
> your "phone" is still ringing. It is during that bogus ringing time
> that you can listen for fax tones.
>
> What you are looking for is called a fax switch. It picks up the line
> but sends out ringing tones to the caller (so they don't the call has
> been picked up yet). In about 2-3 seconds, if it hears fax tones then
> it switches to the fax output. If no fax tones are heard, it switches
> the call to the phone output. The fax output goes to your fax modem's
> input and the phone output goes to your telephone. The problem with a
> fax switch is that it lengthens how many rings the caller hears before
> possibly getting redirected to an answering machine to leave a message.
> If you use a telco-provided answering service, it won't work because the
> fax switch picked the call on the 1st or 2nd ring.
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22fax+switch%22
> http://www.google.com/images?q=%22fax%20switch%22
>
> It's possible some newer fax modems include the fax switch function but
> it's been a decade since I needed to use my old fax modem or even looked
> at what are available. You do NOT need to share your telephone (voice)
> line with a fax machine. Nor do you have to buy a 2nd line and pay more
> for it (often there is a luxury tax attached to 2nd and additional lines
> to a residence). Instead of having senders connect to your home phone
> number to send you a fax, have them connect to an efax service. The fax
> sender connects to a fax machine at the service and the service receives
> the fax. Then the service sends you the fax as a .tif or .pdf file
> attached to an email which means you get to use your e-mail client to
> organize the inbound faxes, read them when you want and just about
> anywhere you want and even on other-user hosts, and you never have to
> fight over the use of your home phone line between voice and fax calls.
>
> eFax.com has a free receive-only service (though, as I recall looking
> last time, it can be hard to find on their web site - but Google found
> it easily at http://www.efax.com/efax-free). You cannot send faxes uses
> an eFax Free account but you can receive them without sharing a line,
> get the convenience of reading them as viewable attachments in e-mails,
> and Windows has a .tif viewer (you can't get .pdf attachments unless you
> pay for their Plus service). So you can receive faxes for free and get
> them via e-mail.
>
> So how do you send faxes without using your phone line? Well, there are
> service providers for that, too. FaxZero is one (2 pages max plus they
> prepend their promo cover page with sender/recipient info). GotFreeFax
> and MyFax are a couple of other free fax sending services. You upload
> your doc to their service and they fax it to the specific target fax
> number. However, because you are giving info to a 3rd party, be careful
> as to what content it contains. These services (just as when you use
> your own fax modem) do not encrypt the content of your faxes. You need
> special gear for encryption with faxing and it is unlikely that either
> party will have the requisite setup for encrypted faxing. Plus you are
> sending that content to the 3rd party to then fax your document so it is
> possible that a rogue employee might steal your fax content. So I
> wouldn't recommend using 3rd party doc-to-fax sending services when the
> content is sensitive, like banking or credit card info.
>
> Unless it is some gov't agency steeped in ancient schemes of electronic
> document transmission that they only support facsimile, I've always
> managed to force the other party to accept an e-mail. There is nothing
> more secure about faxing than in sending e-mails. Anything you send via
> faxing is just as vulnerable to spying during transmission as when
> sending e-mails. Plus faxes sit around in fax machines so anyone
> wandering by can read it. However, unlike encrypted faxing, setting up
> e-mail clients to use e-mail certificates to employ encryption takes a
> little effort but doesn't cost anything to do the setup (since you can
> get free e-mail certs). So regardless of what you do with faxing, I'd
> suggest feigning a complete inability to send or receive a fax to see if
> you can force the other party to use e-mail. Whether you want to setup
> encrypted e-mails means you get more security (which you never had when
> faxing) but isn't likely needed.
>
> So you could get a fax switch. Or you could abandon the old hardware
> scheme (on your end) and use a free fax receiving service (eFax) and a
> free fax sending service (FaxZero and others). Or you could demand the
> other party accept the use of e-mail.

Thanks VanguardLH for the comprehensive post.

Have a great weekend :-)
From: JD on 18 Jul 2010 19:42
VegasDon wrote:
> On Jul 17, 2:25 pm, JD <J...(a)No-where.con> wrote:
>> Hey Experts :-)
>>
>> I have a fax in my PC and use it often to send faxes.
>>
>> It can accept faxes too but only when I set it to do
>> that. If it is not set, it does not answer. When
>> it is set
>> to take them, no other calls can get through.
>>
>> Is there any such thing as a little prog for the
>> PC that
>> can recognize fax tones and answer the fax calls.
>>
>> TIA
>
> Get rid of all the problems. Send PDF files in your email. Scan the
> info, send it as an attachment and none of this difficulty will
> exist. It is the same as faxing, is 24 hours a day and seven days a
> week. If they want a hard copy they just hit print. I use a free
> program called cutePDF.
>
> Don in Las Vegas

Don you would be surprised if you had a close look
at governments and commerce in the US. A large
number of organizations have only phone lines, a
lesser number have faxes
and far less have email addreses. A significant
percentage have made no advance since
the telephone was invented, well over a century
ago. I often see government letters with
the address only - they expect snail mail.
From: Mike Easter on 18 Jul 2010 20:27
JD wrote:
> VegasDon wrote:

>> Get rid of all the problems. Send PDF files in your email. Scan the
>> info, send it as an attachment and none of this difficulty will
>> exist. It is the same as faxing, is 24 hours a day and seven days a
>> week. If they want a hard copy they just hit print. I use a free
>> program called cutePDF.

> Don you would be surprised if you had a close look at governments and
> commerce in the US. A large number of organizations have only phone
> lines, a lesser number have faxes and far less have email addreses.
> A significant percentage have made no advance since the telephone was
> invented, well over a century ago. I often see government letters
> with the address only - they expect snail mail.

There are other offices or access points which are unable to send
anything by snailmail or email; they can only fax.

The person holding the telephone with whom you speak is not
'authorized'/afforded to have stamps or envelopes or a computer. S/He
is only provided a copy machine and a fax machine. You can snailmail
them something, but of course sending them a fax is better.

The fax machine has not gone away by a long shot.

--
Mike Easter
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