fax to email

[jimandy]

OK, maybe I haven't looked far enough but I can't find a product that seems like it would be useful. Think of a fax machine that could be programmed with email addresses (as an option to a fax phone number) and when you send, it dials up your ISP and sends the fax as an attachment with the message text as the cover sheet. I see a lot of services that provide sending an email to a fax, and some that provde fax to email for a fee,
http://www.savetz.com/fax/#cani lists a bunch of fax/by internet services.
but I'm talking about a box that reformats the scan to gif or bmp and sends it without a fee beyond your regular internet connection charge.

[Chris Smith]

In the old day it was for free? [for the PC]

Check into some of the old FAX convertor disks?

Fax's should have been obsolete 10 years back, but still there are die hards?

Probably the banks and cops?

Any one can fake it, but they still take it serious?

[rshayes]

One program that may be able to open the fax file and save it in a different format is IrfanView. Try searching with google. If I remember correctly it is a free download from a site in Austria. It opens a wide variety of files, and the fax format may be one of them.

[Dimbulb]

http://www.faxdigits.com/how-fax-digits ... works.html

[jimandy]

At first glance, DimBulb, that looks like what I want, but I don't find a price on the box (the fax to broadband adapter) and clicking around on the site brings up a $7.95 fee.

Another site http://www.transferra.com/cms/ Advertises a "fax adapter" but further reading shows you need a computer running their software and they mention needing a "fax-to-email service provider" which sounds like a fee service.

I would assume a fax-adapter box would, of course, be a dedicetd computer that could re-format the output of the analog fax signal.

[Dimbulb]

it is there but not for the average hobbiest
going from open source linux to windows would require programing skill

there is a softmodem type:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lintad

and a hard fax modem type:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vocp

[transferra]

At first glance, DimBulb, that looks like what I want, but I don't find a price on the box (the fax to broadband adapter) and clicking around on the site brings up a $7.95 fee.

Another site http://www.transferra.com/cms/ Advertises a "fax adapter" but further reading shows you need a computer running their software and they mention needing a "fax-to-email service provider" which sounds like a fee service.

I would assume a fax-adapter box would, of course, be a dedicetd computer that could re-format the output of the analog fax signal.

Wow... somebody actually found my little Transferra site? The site's not quite ready to handle orders yet, but should be soon.

I'm Bryan, the designer of the Transferra fax adapter. For clarification, there is no fee based service on our end. The IFA-1 is designed to work with any fax-to-email service of your choice - some of which can be had for as little as $5 or $6 a month.

The IFA-1 allows you to interact with your fax machine in the same way you conventionally would... i.e. walk up, dial the number, press send. The difference is that your fax machine is now connected to your computer instead of a conventional phone line. Behind the scenes, the box is handling the line-state control, dtmf detection, etc... between your fax machine and your fax modem. The fax server software (included) controls everything behind the scenes as a Windows service, and handles the interaction with your email provider.

It's designed as an alternative to T.38. Being that T.38 is bandwidth dependent and not entirely robust as a protocol, the IFA-1 makes use of T.37 (fax over email).

You've indicated that you want to be able to convert a fax to GIF or BMP. The fax server software actually converts the fax image to BMP at one point before it finally gets converted to PDF. It would only be a few lines of code to provide an option to store these BMP files instead, if that's what your after.

Hopefully this answers your question. If your interested in the IFA-1, feel free to contact me personally at [email protected].

Thanks,

Bryan Pape
Transferra Communications
1-800-992-0703
[email protected]