Fax and Copier Lease

While the Internet revolution has made the faxing system obsolete, there are several businesses that still use fax machines to electronically send documents to distant locations. Fax machines are used to instantly transmit important office documents. Especially when you want the other person to sign a contract, fax machines can become extremely useful. Today, most multifunction copiers come with a faxing capability where you can scan and fax documents without turning on a computer.

If your business’s daily activities involve sending and receiving faxes frequently, you should to take a closer look at the faxing capabilities offered by a multifunction copier. Copiers that provide specific faxing capabilities such as broadcasting faxes to multiple locations and one-touch speed dialing give a nice return for your money. Standard phone features with answering machine and caller ID would be beneficial.

Fax Machine Specs

Multi-Function Fax Machines

Recommended fax machine

Canon imageCLASS MF4770n is a perfect fax machine that offers robust performance for large workgroups and small offices as well. At a reasonable price, this MFC offers high-end features making it affordable for small and home offices as well. This machine can scan, fax or print to and from a printer. At the same time, it can act as a standalone fax machine. The print speed of 24 ppm is good and the image quality is decent. The Super G3 fax modem offers 33.6 kbps modem speed with a transmission speed of 3 seconds. On-board memory allows you to store 250 sheets. Four one-touch speed dials with 100 coded dials are allowed. For group dialing, it offers 103 destinations, and 114 destinations can be simultaneously broadcasted. The price is around $199.

Be it standalone or MFCs, fax machines use laser technology to transmit fax documents. So, a multifunction laser copier would be ideal to serve your office’s faxing needs. There are inkjet printers that offer faxing features. However, the quality of the image has been a concern. While short-listing a fax machine, there are certain aspects to consider.

Transmission speed

One of the important aspects of the fax machine is its transmission speed. Machines that come with a fast transmission speed would save time, ink, consumables and energy. This speed is measured in kilobytes per seconds (kbps). A basic fax machine can transmit a single page in 6-10 seconds. High-end MFCs can transmit a page in less than 3 seconds. If speed and efficiency are requirements for your business, be prepared to spend more for the MFC.

PPM/CPM

Businesses that send and receive a considerable number of faxes every day should look at the ability of pages per minute of the machine. Not to mention, the more number of pages faxed per minute improves the efficiency of your business while saving time and money.

Memory

The second aspect is the onboard memory. When you run out of paper while the pages are being transmitted, important information can be lost. Fax machines that come with at least 2 GB memory can store 100-200 pages and transmit them accordingly.

Ease of use

Features such as speed dialing allow you to quickly and easily send faxes to anyone. A machine with a speed dial option can store hundreds of numbers, which allows you to press a single button for the faxing task. In addition, the broadcasting ability of the machine allows you to simultaneously send a single document to multiple fax machines to save time and money. In addition, the duty cycle of the machine is a feature to note. Something around 10,000 per month should be good. More importantly, the reliability of the machine in sending and receiving fax documents is important. Dealing with paper jams and frequent error messages during important document transactions can be frustrating. The image quality needs to be checked out. The price of the machine has to be considered as well. Along with the initial investment, check out the operational expenses for the consumables and supplies.

What type of businesses use fax machines?

Even in today’s digital world, there are certain vertical markets that take advantage of faxing capabilities. Banking, finance, legal and health care are the important segments that regularly use fax machines. These industries require the recipients to sign the copy most of the time. With a fax machine, this process becomes quick and easy. Government offices maintain paper documents that can be easily transmitted through a fax machine. Moreover, fax copies are traceable and are legally binding. Unlike email and mobile messages where you are not sure about the receipt of the message, a fax machine provides a delivery notification that the recipient has received it.

How useful is fax in 2016?

Even when technology is innovating at a rapid pace, businesses are trying different ways to optimize resources. Using faxing capabilities in an MFC is among them. Especially those in sales and marketing prefer to fax messages to customers instead of emails. With a fax machine, they can send a copy to multiple recipients and at the same time ensure that recipients actually read it. Small and medium businesses can take advantage of the reduced operational costs involved with a fax option. There are certain businesses that prefer a fax message instead of an email. The reason is that an influx of email messages can bury important messages within them. With a fax message, they can easily work on important documents.