Fax Featured Article

A common problem many people run into in these digital times is the need to fax documents; not only do most people not have fax machines at home, many don't even have landlines anymore, entirely relying instead on a mobile phone. However, this isn't the problem it once was.

The simplest solution would be to send documents via email as PDF. PDF format is, after all, widely accepted commercially and in the enterprise. Even Microsoft (News - Alert) Word can generate a PDF version of word documents — it doesn't get any more accessible than that.

However, a number of solutions have popped up recently meant specifically to solve the problem of faxing. HelloFax is one such solution. It can handle any number of image and document types and even boasts integration with Google (News - Alert) Drive, making it pretty easily accessible to the average user. One caveat to HelloFax, however, is the fact that it cannot fax to traditional fax machines, making it more or less equivalent to sending a PDF via email.

Enter InterFax: this Internet fax service supports direct faxing from Google Docs, putting it more or less on par with HelloFax. InterFax, however, is capable of sending faxes directly to real fax machines, scoring it extra points in terms of functionality and usefulness. Users need only click the "Fax This" bookmarklet on any Google Docs document, type in the fax number and it works exactly as though it were a real fax machine.

This added feature comes with a price, of course. Each page sent to a fax machine with InterFax costs $0.07. There aren't any setup fees, though, which is nice. Lastly, with Google's recent acquisition of QuickOffice, an Office 365 equivalent for Android (News - Alert) and iOS, sending faxes from a mobile device may also be made very easy very soon.

For users not keen on getting a fax machine but who also have plenty of faxing to do, services like Fax.com or MyFax (News - Alert) also offer PC-to-fax-machine functionality. These services cost about $10 per month, allowing for an unlimited number of faxes. They also don't rely on Google Docs like InterFax, meaning they aren't geared toward the faxing of digital files but rather scanned documents in common image formats.

With any one of the above services, pretty much everybody should be able to find an online fax solution to meet their needs.