I have a generic internal 56kbps modem that I use for sending and receiving faxes from my Vista computer. Problem is that it is too slow when sending a fax compared to my dedicated fax machine, and the image quality isn’t any better. I reduced fax quality to draft but the fax transmission was only marginally faster while the document was practically unreadable.
Also I had the same problem with various combinations of computers, operating systems and different brands of modems. Always they were way slower than dedicated fax machines.
Are there any settings I could tweak to make it faster?
Are you testing the exact same document? Fax compression is very basic. If the page has a lot of graphics or text then it will take a lot longer than a page with little text or graphics. A background image or watermark makes things much worse.
The fax protocol is something of a nightmare of 6 or 7 different protocols and revisions. There are also different classes. You want to use Class 2.0, not 1 or 2. Fax machines are notoriously unreliable and picky about whom they can send/receive with and at what speeds. Your modem might just not be able to do the faster protocol. Or during the handshake process your modem and a fax machine cant agree on a speed and protocol so they just fall back to an older one. Without the logs its hard to say whats going on.
Yes, I compare the same exact pages, when sent through my Epson all-in-one machine it takes less than half the time. Also the slow speed occurs only when sending, it receives faxes at normal speed so I don’t think it is a handshake protocol thing.
I also found some registry tweaks but they are mostly modem-specific and will require a lot of trial and error. It is too much pain in the ass to troubleshoot so I guess I’ll have to live with my slow fax.
Unfortunately people here in Greece are not very comfortable with e-mail and still use fax a lot
