This isn’t strictly a Crystal topic, but something many of you may find useful. I have recently tried 2 services that allow me to receive faxes via Email. This is a big help when I am on the road.

EFAX.com:
I tried this one first because it is free for receiving faxes. You get a free personal fax number and can receive 20 pages a month at no charge. The software to read the faxes has banner advertising and you do get some marketing Email but not much. If you want to send faxes as well then you must upgrade to Efax Plus/Pro which is 16.95 per month. You must also upgrade if you want a local area code for your fax number.

TrustFax.com:
I tried this one next because it allows you to both receive and send faxes via Email. While it isn’t free it costs only $30 per year plus a per page cost of 10 cents. You also get a personal toll-free number to receive your faxes. The part I like best is that you can Email a PDF with the phone number and it will automatically fax the PDF to that phone number. You get an Email confirmation that the fax went through.

I don’t do much faxing anymore but when I need to fax I now use TrustFax. I like it because it allows me to see my fax history within my Email client. I also no longer need to print things to paper before faxing. I can just print to PDF and Email it to TrustFax. When I have to fax a hard copy of something I scan it into a PDF and then EMail that to TrusfFax.