When my fax machine gave up the ghost I decided not to replace it. I figured most people could send me an email with an attachment if necessary and I could fax OUT of my computer relatively easily. In additon I did not see the reason to tie up another phone line, also I could do without one more piece of office equipment in my already cramped quarters.

I did find that some people wanted to send me a "hard copy" document and some business people look at you askance if you do not have a fax number. Enter jfax.com, now j2 Global Communications.

I have been using this service over a year and it has been very convenient and reliable. J2 offers a number of communications services but the fax service is the only one I use and that I am familiar with.

A person sending a fax to you calls a phone number that is unique to you and the fax shows up as a .tif file in your email box. You click on the attachment, view it online and print it, if necessary. That's the part I really like because most of the faxes I get are not necessary to print.

In my opinion there are no strings attached to this free service, except for the fact that I live in Chicago and my fax number is in California. This can be a drawback for some folks who might consider this alternative, but I do business with people all over the country and most of the businesses I work with locally can absorb the cost of a long distance fax. With all of the changes in area codes no one even realizes this is not a Chicago area code.

This minor inconvenience seems to be the key to j2's marketing strategy because for a fee I can get a local number from them, but if I wanted to pay almost $100 a year I would just buy a fax machine for the same hundred bucks.

The truth is this works for me because I get 1 or 2 faxes a week, since I encourage people to use email. This solution does not address outgoing email which can be easily accomplished if you have a scanner and a phone modem on your computer.

I like this service -- besides I can always say something like, "just fax it to my west coast office and I'll pick it up later."



Recommended: Yes