eFax > Reviews > No Fax Machine - No Problem

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Free  -  Easy  -  Quick  -  Reliable
Disadvantages:	Requires a 380k download to read faxes

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Believe it or not, there are still people out there who use fax machines and do not have email! What do you do when someone insists on sending you a fax – dust off your old fax machine, plug it in and hope it still works? Not any more; there is a free alternative that allows you to receive faxes direct to your email box.

eFax.com give users a FREE 0870 (Normal national rate) fax number; faxes are sent directly to any email address you nominate. The file arrives – normally within a couple of minutes of having been sent - as an attachment in .efx format and with each A4 page being only around 15K it takes seconds to download. The quality is better than on a normal fax machine.

Using the simple eFax Messenger software (380k free download), the fax can be read on screen or printed out to hard copy – no more thermal paper to worry about! The fax can be zoomed in and out, rotated (why do some people insist of faxing stuff upside down?) and stored as thumbnails for easy filing.

The service is completely free for 0870 numbers, although, for a monthly fee of $9.95 you can have a local rate 0845 fax number instead with the added ability to send email to fax anywhere in the world for a few cents a minute.

Sending faxes to your free eFax is cheaper than sending to many stand-alone fax machines as the modem speed is faster.

eFax can also be set up (optionally) as a telephone answering machine – now quaintly known as “voice mail”.

There are obvious advantages to using this free service:

! No need to buy a fax machine
! No need to free up a line for incoming faxes
! No cost
! Receive faxes anywhere that has Internet access
! Print out on normal paper
! Normal national rate fax number (unlike YAC who charge a premium rip-off rate to people who fax you)
! Reliability

The only disadvantage to this service is that you cannot read the faxes without downloading the eFax Messenger software. This is a small price to pay for a service that is free!

eFax.com should not be confused with eFax.co.uk who charge £46.98 for a similar service.