Is it Time to Ditch the Fax Number?

The precursor to the modern fax machine was patented in 1843. Business fax technology caught on widely in the mid-1970s. So why, thirty years later, are those of us on the cutting edge still wasting our time wrestling with (and paying for) ways to hook into this last-generation network for sending around images of paper documents?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but over the last decade I’ve been through a ridiculous number of alternatives in my search for a workable fax solution:

  • PC fax cards
  • Dedicated fax machines
  • Outlook add-in software
  • Online fax-to-email gateways

Every one of these things has ended up requiring time, expense, and configuration. Meanwhile, I’ve been sending and receiving fewer and fewer faxes every years, as even my least up-to-date clients have managed to migrate themselves largely to e-mail. Maybe there are some industries where the fax machine remains an essential tool, but the sort of consulting I’m in doesn’t seem to be one of them.

So, I believe this is the year that I’m finally going to pull the plug on this piece of 19th-century technology. I’ll remove one bit of contact info from my business cards and signature block, and make myself that much simpler to contact. If I simply must send a fax to someone still living in the last generation, there’s always FaxZero. And if a customer asks for my fax number, I’ll tell them I’m not reachable by carrier pigeon either.

Am I crazy? Do you still find fax availability worth paying for?

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