Every day, new ways of using the Internet are being discovered. When people first started using the Internet, they used it to find new pieces of information that weren’t easily available in books at home or at the local library. As time has gone on, we’ve learned to use it for everything from seeking out bargains to finding directions to communicating and connecting with other people. Give it a few more years, and we might well wonder if there’s anything the Internet won’t be able to do.
Sometimes, we can even use the Internet to extend the usefulness of external technologies — such as sending text messages to our friends’ cellphones from our home computers. You can even fax documents to your customers with the help of a service like RingCentral. What is nice about this service is you can do it from anywhere without using a fax machine. This means that even you if you are at the beach or inside your hotel room during your vacation, you can still fax those important documents to your customer by using your computer or even your smartphone. Just make sure there is a strong Wi-Fi or Internet connection where you are located.
When you fax your documents to your customers, you can do away with asking for a fax tone before you can begin sending documents. What is important is that your customer’s fax machine is online. Just click on the Send as Internet Fax button and your document is off to your customer’s fax machine. If you feel the need to send another copy of the document, just click on the same button again. Unlike when you are using a fax machine, you don’t have to re-insert the document or documents in the machine to fax again.
What many businessmen like about sending fax through the Internet is that it’s cost efficient. If there is something you’d have to pay for before you can send a fax through the Internet, it would be just the fax service. The amount you’d pay for the fax service is such a small amount compared to what you’d have to spend for a fax machine or for its repair if it were to break down. (But if you happen to have a fax machine, I would suggest that you still keep it where it is. You may find it still handy just in case something happens to your Internet service!)
Speed is another reason I find sending fax through the Internet much better than using a fax machine. Documents travel faster through the Internet because it makes use of digital or electromagnetic signals, which travel faster. Don’t you find it boring to wait for the fax machine to finish scanning the documents before they’re finally sent down the telephone wire? The reason data travels slowly down the telephone wire is it’s in the form of analog or electrical signals.
These are just a few of the reasons that make sending fax through the Internet more economical and practical compared to using the fax machine. But even though this method of sending faxes is gradually gaining popularity, a lot of people still use the fax machine — especially if they are in a hurry to send documents that have no electronic copies or have yet to be scanned.
Do you still have a use for an old-fashioned fax machine, or do you rely on the Internet to do the job? Please leave a comment below and let us know!
Image: FAX and VHS — How Old Skool by schatz