Free Faxing

I've absolutely had it with inkjet printers. The hilarious Jonathan Ian, of illwillpress.com, describes my experiences almost perfectly here. It is, as if the manufactures are corn-holing us into a never ending cycle of ink purchasing. After my less than two year old Brother MFC-5840CN died on me (the heads became clogged and ruined after not being used for a few months), I've decided I'm done with this type of printer all together. After a few poorly constructed form e-mails, Brother redirected me to a "local service" who offered to replace my heads for $150 (gee, what a deal). Needless to say, I'm done with Brother products. It really doesn't take much for a company to lose my business.

So, now I need a new printer which brings me to the topic of this post. I had a fax machine, scanner, and multidrive built into the old Brother. I ended up using these features only a few times. If you get "cake eyes" and think you need all these features, stop and consider the application of having your scanner or multidrive (if you can get it to work with network functionality) in another room. The fax machine was actually handy. On a few occasions, I've had to fax my resume to companies and it saved me a few dollars. However, the few times I used this device didn't warrant needing this function. What I decided on was a black and white laser printer, with network functionality, good reviews, and cheap toners. Voila the Lexmark E Series 120N (see picture).

If I switched VOIP providers, I could easily integrate these features into my Trixbox. While this is true, the amount of faxing I do does not warrant structuring my service around fax support.. What I need is a free faxing solution that allows me to receive faxes via email and send faxes via the internet. There are several companies out there that offer free trials, but a free trial doesn't last forever. The solution I found involves using two services (as it's likely a fax company is not going to let you do both for free-if you find one let me know).

http://faxzero.com/index.php (to send)

http://www.k7.net/about.htm (to recieve)

I could have chose eFax to receive, but I've used them professionally and hate their proprietary client. I wanted to be able to view the fax inside my email client.

Well, I hope this saved you a few bucks. Later gators

-Kyle@irricheap.com