The computer based fax services has proved to be one of a very important productivity-enhancement tool for the fax intensive industries The computer –based faxing service is better than the manual ,traditional faxing in many ways in terms of accuracy, speed and cost effectiveness.
With the popularity of the modem in a widespread way with the personal computers, the PCs gradually came into be used as the fax senders, directly. Previously, a hard copy of the material to be faxed had to be printed out and then sent through a fax machine. These days, the material to faxed is printed directly to the fax software and then that is sent through the computer modem. The receiving also takes place in the same way as the sending.
In two ways fax services can be provided with the help of the computer:
• Via phone line
• Via the internet
Via phone line: This type of computer faxing uses only the telephone network to send or receive the fax. This type of service can be used in communicating the fax material from a remote place to the fax machine. The disadvantage of this system is that the computer has to be kept turned on all the time and the software has also to be kept on running when the operation is carried out.
Via the internet: The internet based faxing is an extended service of the computer based faxing. Other than the computer and telephone network , it require a fax server.This fax server acts as the gateway to the internet. It converts the fax posted to PDF format and sends it to the fax server.The fax server in turn transmits the same to the recipient through the telephone network. Again a fax can be sent through the telephone network to a fax server, it is then converted to PDF format and transmitted to the Web server, which in turn then posts the same to the account of the receiver. The internet based faxing saves a huge amount of money, especially when big faxes are send abroad as there is no requirement of a telephone connection to send a fax over the internet.
Computer based faxing saves on time, cost of telephone connection, maintenance of fax machines, requirement of and maintenance of hard copies etc.