I am doing research for an ill friend. He works out of his house and relies on his fax machine. What is a good product? It only needs to be a stand alone machine and does not need to be part of a network or attached to a computer. He does often have numerous pages come across.

I have a brother laser printer/ scanner/ fax, but admittedly will be overkill for your needs.

I mention it only because of the ease of the fax functionality, and I would suggest looking into a brother fax if you find one.

Didn't think people still used them. Maybe an all in one that does plain paper printing. Fax paper used to be more expensive. Not even sure where you get fax paper, let alone a fax machine.

Does he not own a computer and printer?

I bought a Brother MFCL2700DW all-in-one in October; it prints black/white only. It replaced an HP inkjet fax machine that was killing me for ink - it seemed to dry up if it went two weeks without printing. The Brother uses a toner cartridge (powder) rather than liquid ink, so can sit unprinting indefinitely with no ill results. That was the real point of the purchase. It'll hold 250 sheets of paper for incoming faxes; I've never sent more than a few pages outgoing, but the feeder looks like it could hold 20 pages or so.

It's fax function is simple to use.



The bonus for your friend (if he wants the feature) is the scanning/printing. It will network with a PC either wireless or wired, prints well and quickly (again, black/white only), and scans either color or black/white.

It was $200 delivered.

I have an HP all-in-one wireless inkjet that I got for $100 that works great for sending and receiving faxes. Mine was the 8610 but the current version is the 8710 that amazon has for $120 right now. Will even convert them to pdf for you and save them on your computer if you want.

We had some Kyocera AIOs that were pretty decent. I don't know if it's even possible to buy a FAX-only machine, any more?

Last one I recall putting in service, when the one it replaced died, was retrieved out of storage from another site having been closed. I went that way because I was having difficulty finding new hardware with which to replace it, IIRC. I think that was two years before I retired?

So, the company from which I retired still had them, but, when I realized, one day, my department wasn't getting help requests for them any more, in asking around I found that was because nobody was using them (much?). And that was a year ago.

Thanks all, Got the Brother 4100.

Hope it works out, I opt for the all in one units however I eliminated the fax line and contracted with an outside fax service, they provide a toll free inbound fax number, I create my own cover page and everything is done via scanner.


Inbound faxes are pdf format and sent to my email, that way they are on my PC but I also get a copy on my smart phone. So you can see the fax when you are out of the office, respond if you need to, print it from your phone it just is another advantage.


That way you have a pdf of the file that can be saved to your PC and if something goes wrong, or needs modification, you can recall it, resend, etc.

You can also send directly from your PC without having to print anything to hard copy.

Probably do a couple hundred inbound and outbound e-faxes a day.

Personally eliminated the fax machine mid-1990's but most all Multi-Function Printers have this capability.
You could of course use an online fax service and a scanner or scan-then-email.
YMMV

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Didn't think people still used them. Maybe an all in one that does plain paper printing. Fax paper used to be more expensive. Not even sure where you get fax paper, let alone a fax machine.

Does he not own a computer and printer?

Fax machines these days are just normal inkjet or laser printers with a phone modem and a tiny computer that speaks fax machine.

Myfax.com
costs me $20 a month and has been 100% reliable for over 10 years.
all faxes come to my email.
scan and email out to any fax number.

if he's in Virginia have him stop by and I'll give him one.