My four year old Canon fax (copy, scan and print) machine died, probably
from lack of use. I threw it away and purchased the least expensive,
lowest profile fax machine that Costco had. A Panasonic, which was plain
paper, but used ribbon ink. Model # KX-FPG378.It seems that there are
no simple fax machines anymore, or at least they’re very difficult to find
in most stores. Manufactures can charge a premium for a multi function
machine that can fax, copy, scan, print, make coffee and your morning
toast. And of course the newer machines use a 2.4 GHz wireless phone,
which interferes with some home wireless networks.
So here I am with this month old Panasonic fax machine that worked the
day I purchased it. I needed to receive a fax yesterday, sign it and fax
it back. I was able to receive the fax, but no matter how hard I tried, I
kept getting "fax failure" voice messages when trying to send it back.
Though I’m good with computer hardware, I tend to hate fax machines, and
they sense it and hate me. Problem is that I only need a fax machine about
five or six times a year and it’s more convenient to have one sitting here
than to drive a 15 mile round trip each time I need to send or receive a
fax.
This morning I went to Staples and purchased a bottom of the line,
simple Sharp inkjet fax machine that uses plain paper for $69. Though the
cartridge cost about $38, it can print 500 pages, which may be more faxes
that I’ll receive in this lifetime.
Tip – an alternative to sending faxes is to scan the document and save
it as a PDF in Photoshop. It uses JPEG compression so the resulting file
size is very manageable. I was able to e-mail a higher quality signed
document that looked exactly like the original, than if I had faxed it.
