Introducing the Internet Fax Machine! BroadBandFax is a Fax Machine You Can Connect to the Internet! - 13,203 Views, 8 Comments
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For all of you who have wished that you could easily fax via the Internet from your own fax machine, or that you could receive faxes to your own fax machine and have them end up in your email, well, wish no more! The BroadBandFax machine (Model UX-B800SE) just introduced by Sharp is the Internet fax machine you’ve been waiting for! The UX-B800SE BroadBand Fax machine by Sharp is the first truly Internet-ready fax machine. It’s a true, full-fledged fax machine, but it also has an ethernet (network) port. Meaning you can connect it to the Internet. “The new UX-B800SE is a cost-effective solution for professionals who need access to faxes when traveling. It receives faxes directly to e-mail so business travelers can view important documents on any computer, ensuring that pertinent information is never lost or delayed,â€? said Dan Wynne, Senior Director and Group Leader for Sharp’s Commercial Markets Sales & Solutions Group. “This innovative product also allows traveling business people to access hardcopy faxes sent to an office without paying for an electronic fax service, as well as sending faxes to a home that does not have a fax machine.” The UX-B800SE BroadBandFax machine has a MSRP of $159.95. You can read all of the specs for the Sharp BroadBandFax Machine at Amazon (click on the picture): Of course, if you don’t want to shell out $159.95, you can always use FaxZero’s free Internet fax service.
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Introducing the Internet Fax Machine! BroadBandFax is a Fax Machine You Can Connect to the Internet!
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How exactly is this different from the all-in-one HP 7210 that I bought a while ago, or any similar machines which have been available for years?
Comment by Craig Hughes — 8/5/2006 @ 4:42 pm
The HP all-in-ones do not receive faxes over a phone line and route them to an email address without the need to print. That’s the killer feature. Such functionality has been available for a long time for companies with IT departments but not at the $130 price point for the SOHO market.
Comment by Paul E — 9/24/2006 @ 6:47 am
I own a small VoIP company. The problem we have is you cannot fax over VoIP. If Sharp would change the machine, just a minor change, this would be a perfect solution. There is a “.com” button. If this were programmable then the user would simply have to type the fax number, and hit the “.com” button and hit send. Basically, that .com button could be programmed with “efax.com” or “smartfax.com” or whatever you want. Then those services would fax the scan and this would be a perfect product!
Comment by Mark — 11/30/2006 @ 9:27 pm
This machine is worthless, unless you have a dedicated fax line,
or plan to answer every call. This machine will NOT work with
an answering machine, unlike every other fax machine on the market.
How stupid is Sharp to release such a great product, and forget the
most important thing.
Comment by bossmanrwo — 1/1/2007 @ 7:47 pm
It does work with a fax machine but not with the default settings. Read the manual.
Non-technical people may have trouble directly connecting to an Internet Server Provider’s SMTP service. That’s too bad because this is device is awesome! More expensive electronic fax solutions have been available for a number of years but this is the first paper/electronic hybrid I have seen, it works well, and I picked mine up on sale and with a rebate for just $69.00!
It is unfortunate that the Sharp UX-B800SE BroadbandFax only currently supports “POP before SMTP” as an optional SMTP server authentication method. Most Internet service providers require a different kind of SMTP authentication to allow the relay of your email. Fortunately for me it isn’t a problem since I operate my own SMTP server and can permit relay for internal IP addresses. I would think that Sharp could enhance the SMTP interface with a firmware upgrade provided they planned for making firmware upgrades. I can’t see why not as it has Ethernet connectivity and a built in web server to administer settings.
By the way, you can always run your own SMTP relay server on a computer or server in your small office / home office network that can serve as a bridge between the UX-B800SE and an ISP’s SMTP service. There are lots of free SMTP relay servers that can handle other SMTP authentication schemes in addition to the “POP before SMTP” one provided by the UX-B800SE.
Anyhow, if you can overcome the SMTP issue this is a great device.
Pros:
* easy to use web interface for email/network configuration and memory location maintenance
* easy to use scan to email interface that supports black and white PDF or TIFF formats
* incoming faxes can be configured to never print on paper but instead route as PDF or TIFF to a specified email address; while it has the ability to configure this behavior differently based on 10 or so different incoming fax numbers, I simply set it up to route all faxes to a single specified email address
* supports letter and legal size documents
* duplex function handles scanning/faxing double sided documents with ease
* supports broadcasting to groups of 20 email addresses or fax numbers at a time
* lots of memory locations for email addresses and fax numbers
* secure receive feature (untested by me) can be used to require a 4 digit code to be entered to release newly received faxes from memory
Cons:
* Not completely paperless as delivery confirmation reports and other reports must be printed. Would have been nice to get these through the web interface and/or PDF/TIFF emails.
* Has a fax block feature to block faxes but only from one phone number. Essentially useless in my opinion if I can only block one number.
* Has no computer to outbound fax interface. I’d like to be able to use a form on the device’s web interface, or send an email to a mailbox dedicated to the device, with a PDF attachment and have it routed to a fax number, probably embedded in the subject field or something like that if it’s via email. Right now I can use a modem on my home office computer that shares the fax line to meet this need.
* It only supports black and white fax-quality G4 encoding so this is not a substitute for a good quality scanner.
You can always lease the fax to email feature that the Sharp UXB800SE BroadbandFax delivers, but I have used several leased Internet fax to PDF/TIFF services, and here’s why I think the UXB800SE is superior.
* This is the most intolerable negative of leased Internet fax to PDF/TIFF solutions — false positives to senders! Someone sends you a fax. The electronic fax service receives the fax and indicates a successful transmission to the sender. But then there are delivery problems. An early electronic fax service that I tried did not guarantee delivery or store backup images. They would try to email the image to you three times and then quit after the third. Another one at least has a backup store online for 30 days, however on occasion they become back-logged, and one time it took nearly TWO HOURS for a fax that was sent to me to appear. I didn’t even know it was a problem for an hour since I had gotten used to the receipt of an email indicating that I had a new fax. It nearly killed a deal for me once and guess what? I cracked out the old PAPER FAX MACHINE to solve the problem!
* Busy signals. Not supposed to happen with an electronic fax service, you say? One of their selling points? Think again! They happen with all of them! They overload their services with customers and do a lousy job load balancing.
* They own the fax number. After you advertise the number, print business cards, etc., what if you want to switch providers? No number portability here! You can get around this with a remote call forwarding number that you own and configure to route to the electronic fax service, but at least from my local phone company that’s another $20 per month per call path.
* You’re paying what, $5 to $20 per month for electronic fax service? What kind of CUSTOMER SERVICE do you think you will get for that? NONE! When I complained about the delayed delivery issue described above the attitude was “tough luck, buddy, for this kind of money, deal with it!”
If you’ve got a spare phone line already then why not buy a device that you will own? At $15 per month (what I currently pay) I’ll pay for my purchase of this Sharp Broadband fax machine in five months!
Comment by Paul E — 1/7/2007 @ 6:58 am
Meant to say that it does work with an ANSWERING MACHINE above.
Comment by Paul E — 1/7/2007 @ 6:59 am
iyot
Comment by fuck you this web! — 3/29/2008 @ 2:27 am
I can’t express how much internet fax has helped my business. The price is great, it is reliable, saves a lot of time and leaves me extremely organized. I am also very conscious about the environment so I like how you save paper.
Comment by Melanie Maddison — 2/16/2009 @ 4:49 pm