I quite often have to send repair histories on a car to the manufacturer. Those can sometimes run 20 pages+. On the thicker ones when I scan to PDF the file becomes larger than the manufacturer’s email system will allow. So after scanning 25 pages I have to shit can that PDF and either scan it as 2 PDFs or fax it.
Also maybe your scanner is faster than mine but no way in hell can I scan and email 50 pages in 50 seconds. I can however put 50 pages in the doc feeder and type in the phone number and hit send in well under 50 seconds.
Who cares how long it takes from then? I’m doing 5 other things while the fax is doing its thing.
I don’t know about HIPAA requirements, but as to the first part:
Phone lines can be tapped and recorded much easier and with much less sophisticated technology than “the internet.” Your email gets broken up into little packets that are then merged with billions of other little packets over the internet. The little packets may even take different routes through the internet until they are all merged together at the other end.
Your phone calls are also digitized and packetized. They are also merged with billions of other phone call packets. But they follow a fixed sequential route through the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). You can easily predict where and when the packets will appear.
I find it absolutely amazing to think that anyone would believe that anyone who had the technological sophistication to isolate your personal email packets passing through the internet backbone would not have the sophistication to tap a phone line. If you really believe that some super-high-tech entity is out to steal your communications, relying on an unencrypted phone line for security is useless.
Someone will have to convince the Feds that email exists before they will let us use it like a fax machine.
I kid you not, at least in the real estate field. If we write a purchase offer, we can merely check a box for various kinds of legal delivery – snail mail, personal, or fax, but if we want to use email, we have to send 2 forms first to the involved parties and have them print, sign, scan, and return to us by email, not by mail or fax. This is supposed to prove that they have the capability to handle email.
No other form of legal delivery needs this special treatment, just email. So until the Feds get their collective head out of their collective asses, we will be forced to send faxes every time we send emails for official documents. I do, although my fax machine gets more junk faxes than official documents right now.
There’s a lot of merchants out there that still rely on faxes. I get calls everyday from people asking that their statements be faxed to their accountants. Also, anytime Intuit requests that said merchants send in documentation concerning fraud charges, charge backs, account changes, etc., they prefer said documents be faxed, and this is a major company.
The idea that there are more fax machines around than scanners is mind-boggling. That cannot possibly be true in 2013. If it is, I may well have to fling myself into a volcano in mourning.
I’m actually tempted to form a group that will deliberately spam fax machines just to encourage their extinction. Hmm.
I wouldn’t recommend it. There are laws specific to fax machines that can land you in trouble for it and it is easy to trace. Some people still do it but it is ill advised for your own wellbeing. Unlike e-mail SPAM, fax SPAM costs the receiver money in terms of consumables.
It was traumatic enough seeing adding machines end up as museum pieces. Please not faxes too! 
Funny, just today my secretary and I had to try to hunt down the last working fax machine.
An annoying large number of government offices ONLY accept faxes and will not take PDFs. At one office, they tell me they can’t accept a PDF, so you have to fax the document to them, then they take it and slap it down on a scanner, and…PDF it. :rolleyes:
Their excuse? “Legal reasons.” Yeah.
I use fax all the time. I’m a property manager for a Rural Development property and have to verify all kinds of things about my tenants: employment, assets, public assistance eligibility, bank information, etc. While I do have such capability, many of the places I deal with simply are not equipped to handle scanning documents back to me. I do scan some documents to the home office, but I fax quite a lot to them, too.
I realize this is a separate issue, but I work in a school. Until that little sucker breaks, I’ll be dealing with the ancient fax machine we have. Hell, I’m just lucky I don’t have an Apple IIc sitting on my desk.
I can’t see why a high-tech fax would be better than printing out a file if I did have access to better technology.
And the best part is that every time you fax (or scan) that little guy, you’re losing resolution. I’ve gotten faxes of documents that are so fuzzy they could realistically be anything. And if I wanted to forge a document, fax would be my friend.
But as I mentioned in my post, having a fax physically spit out paper is not a bug, it’s a feature. Going to a fax server would have the same drawback as the e-mail option which I mentioned; it doesn’t have the same physical immediateness.
The “security” stuff is nonsense.
A lot of “faxing” is done over the Internet. For example those online fax sending companies as well as companies that do this themselves.
Also, the receiving fax is rarely printed out anymore but just converted to an email and forwarded to someone who then figures out how to forward it to the right place. That’s right, it ends up being emailed. Archived, stored on servers forever.
Also, arguments such as the truckers faxing manifests ahead to customs. Um, or the system could just use email. Just because someone is stuck decades behind the times is no justification for keeping it that way.
I also seriously doubt that faxes to congresscritters are printed. They are saved just like emails and no doubt ignored just as much.
Scanners are ubiquitous. Fax machines aren’t.
My workplace still sends & receives faxes. Mostly sends–to conservative entities that will be slow about adapting modern technology, for various reasons. However, we haven’t had a dedicated fax machine for a while. The last one also served for light copying–why go down the hall when you just need a page or two?
A move to new quarters has given us a sophisticated copier that’s also a network printer–that scans & faxes, too. In color, of course. We’ve convinced management that we still need a couple of simple printers on the network & even on some desks. (Everybody’s work* can’t* wait for that giant copy/collate/staple project.) And a few of us have our own cute little scanners. Nobody wants their own fax machine…
But I bet fax machines will stay around for a while, lurking on loading docks & other areas not technologically up to date.
Put docs in machine, driver enters number, hit send. Done.
Yup by God if the US and Canadian customs refuse to use email then the truckers should find a country who does use email and drive across THAT border instead of the one they were scheduled to cross.
So what if their load was supposed to go to New York, Germany uses email, so your shit is in Hamburg.
Makes perfect sense.
Not only is a scanner on premises, it’s the same machine! Yes, the fax machine will also scan and email a document. The drivers don’t want that, they ask to fax it.
I think you discount the tech side of scanning. A lot of people are totally and completely clueless when it comes to scanning and then emailing. I worked in two offices where there is a general combo scanner/fax/copier. If you’re scanning, you first have to pick the place where it’s going to be stored or emailed, usually typing in a file name or email address with a stylus on a tiny screen, and then feed the document. And then, if you are not emailing directly from the machine, you have to go back to a desktop, find where it is, usually open it to confirm that’s what it is, meaning you have to have the appropriate program or be able to navigate through Windows Explorer, involving right clicks and extensions and all sorts of panic inducing things for the average user. Many people would lock up on step one, and step back and stare at the machine while sweating.
Faxes? Just use it like a telephone, easy peasy.
Have the email alert go to a group inbox shared by everyone in the office. If anything, that would be more immediate because email can be checked at home or in transit but for faxes, someone needs to be in the office.
Um, the issue is not who is being forced to use old tech, it’s the people the are forcing it on others.
Is this too complicated for you?
Even with busy signals (most fax machines built since 1990 just wait and try again) most faxes have the advantage of going through as reliably as any phone call.
Email? I’ve seen too many emails fall into the ether. That can be a bit nervewracking.