I have been researching e-faxes lately and haven't narrowed it down yet. I am thinking of going with one company for inbound and another for outbound. I miss my dedicated fax but not the price of my landline account which paid for it.

Now, I also have a Lexmark All in One printer. So I am thinking, why do I actually need an e-fax? If I scan documents into my Lexmark I can attach that to an e-mail and send to a recipient's e-mail account. Right? Isn't this the same as what e-fax companies do?

I would think that e-faxes would be used when you don't have a scanner. Am I missing something here, if so please let me know? Thanks

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JoCarole
http://www.shoreofficeservices.com

I used an efax service a few years ago and I had some trouble with the fax reducing the document on the recipient's end. It looked like I had used a smaller font and had 2 inch margins on top and bottom. Ended up going to a client's office with a hardcopy of the newsletter so they could see the finished product instead of arguing over the "errors" they thought they saw in the fax. This may be less of a problem now although it could still be there with clients that have older equipment. I think that as long as your scanner makes a very readable and non-distorted scan you should be good to go. The only possible issue I can see is if your client is technologically challenged and doesn't know if they have Adobe Reader (I am assuming your scan would be PDF). That also happened to me once.

Yes, making the document a PDF makes it more secure and less likely to be changed. Check out the software link on this site for some PDF programs.

One such program that comes to mind is CutePDF -- www.cutepdf.com

My scanner is pretty good, I have used it before to scan documents. But I did not convert to pdf files. That is something that I would need to do before sending it to the recipient's mailbox. Thanks for that tip, that is helpful.

I have used "cutepdf" for converting word docs to pdf that I typed myself. So that is something that I would probably use in this instance too. Thanks

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JoCarole
http://www.shoreofficeservices.com

I have a fax that I use to send out on and an efax number to receive on. The efax number is free and so is receiving a fax. The faxes come to me in PDF form.

Andrea~

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Action Jackson Virtual Assistant|

Thanks Andrea, that is what I was planning on doing, but just wondering about the scanning part myself. Actually I can't remember the last time I had to fax something over to anyone. But I like being prepared just in case.

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JoCarole
http://www.shoreofficeservices.com

I have a scan and email. I have on my "to do" list to check into fax services and get a fax number, but I haven't had the need yet. Of course I don't have any virtual clients yet either! LOL. I do have local clients and we use the scan/email system only.

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Jen Scoggins
www.virtual-jen.com

It's rare, but I still run across the occasional business that doesn't use e-mail as a regular business tool. A fax is still their "high tech" solution so scanning won't work with them. I disconnected my land line and have been using e-faxing for some time now. I prefer scan & e-mail because it is a little easier to read but one of my client's prefers to fax to me because it is faster at their end to feed through a fax machine than to scan.

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Karen Cole, MBA
www.aveonservices.com

Although I have not run into this in my VA world yet, I have run into it in my daily job. Unbelievable as sometimes it may seem, there are still people without email and scanners.

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Joanne