I currently have two phone lines coming into my business; one for regular phone use and another as a dedicated fax line. I also want to begin using my computer for faxing and get rid of my existing fax machine. I only get about 3 or 4 faxes a week.
I realize I can set my computer up for faxing in XP. In order to save money, I would like to go to a single phone line for phone calls and faxing. My question is; if I set up my computer to receive faxes, and these faxes come in on my regular phone line, what happens if I pick up the phone to see if it is a customer? Do I hear a tone indicating that the call is a fax transmission? If I hang up that phone, will the computer continue to receive the fax for me? How does this work when you use a single line for voice and fax?
If you pick up the phone when a fax is coming through, you should hear a few beeps and then the handshaking noise… it sounds like a connecting modem (if you’ve ever heard one dial up or heard one in a movie). Your computer/fax machine should still receive the fax once you hang up.
Reply is right, PROVIDED you pick up the phone within a second or two of the computer answering. If you miss that short window and the two machines are already sending data, then picking up the phone will trash that fax for sure. The machines will hang up and the caller will have to try again. Not a real good technique overall.
In general, AFAIK there’s no good simple way to have the computer answer faxes and not voice calls on a single line. Here are a few ideas …
You can buy software that has your computer act as a fax & answering machine. You may then be able to interrupt the answering machine part once you know it’s a voice call. But then every voice caller has the annoyance of hearing your answering machine followed by you picking up.
You may be able (for an extra fee) to get your phone company to provide 2 numbers and “distinctive ring” on the single line. It’ll be somewhat cheaper than 2 lines. Then you can set up the computer fax, or even the traditional fax machine (if they’re smart ebnough) to recognize one ring and not the other.
But few cheapo fax machines support distinctive ring. Windows XP as originally released did not support distinctive ring. (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;272943). There is an upgrade available that will support distinctive ring: (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;139383), but I don’t know whether it also requires a smarter “distinctive ring-aware” modem as well, or whether all modern modems have the required capability. I suspect they do, but that’s a hunch, not a fact.
3) You can also buy a small box at Radio Shack which is a fax/voice splitter. It has one phone wire that goes to the wall outlet and 2 jacks labeled voice and fax. It routes incoming calls to the correct jack, so you can put a dumb fax machine or computer fax modem on the fax port and a phone and/or answering machine on the other.
What it really does is answer the call itself, then listen for a fax machine on the other end. If it hears fax machine tones, it starts ringing on the fax port and when the real fax machine answers it hooks them together. if it doesn’t hear a fax machine, it rings the voice port instead. Low-tech but it works.
If you want to pay for distinctive ring, some of these splitter boxes can also split the call on the distinctive ring so you can use dumb faxes / modems / answering machines downstream that don’t recognize distinctive ring. This is more reliable and gets the call to the right box a few seconds sooner.
They used to be cheap homeowner junk, $20-30, but I can’t find those now. All I could find was professional quality gear like this example for $90: http://www.ablecomm.com/autfaxswit.html. Here’s a whole page full of similar devices: http://www.twacomm.com/Catalog/Dept_ID_202.htm. With something like this your callers (both voice and fax) won’t be inconvenienced with a weird process.