I Was Just Asked to Send a Fax. Is That Still a Thing?

📠 Fax Wars: Copper vs. E-Fax in the 21st Century

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had to fax something and thought, “Wait… people still do this?”

Welcome to the oddly resilient world of faxing, where documents travel through the matrix in ways that defy all logic. And while most of us have moved on to cloud storage, PDFs, and DocuSign, some industries are still clutching their fax machines like it’s 1995.

Let’s pit the two faxing titans against each other: the nostalgic Copper Fax Machine vs. the modern-but-still-faxing E-Fax.

🧓 Copper Fax: The Analog Dinosaur

Nickname: “Grandpa Fax”Transmission method: Screeches through phone lines like a dial-up modem being attacked by bees.

✅ Pros:

• It just works. Assuming you have a landline, toner, and enough patience to wait through 7 beeps and a "paper jam" error.

• Legally secure. In some jurisdictions, old-school faxes still have more legal clout than email (because logic).

• Satisfying confirmation sheets. That glorious feeling when the page prints, saying your document actually went somewhere.

❌ Cons:

• Requires a copper landline. Which are going extinct faster than floppy disks.

• Costs a fortune to maintain. You’re paying for a line that only talks to other fax machines. That’s like paying for a phone that only calls your grandmother.

• Painfully slow. You’ll grow a beard waiting for 10 pages to go through.

• Low resolution. Say goodbye to legibility.

🌐 E-Fax: The Fax Machine’s Glow-Up

Nickname: “The Zoomer Fax”Transmission method: Files travel over the internet and somehow still count as faxes. Magic.

✅ Pros:

• No landline needed. All you need is internet and an email address.

• Print-to-fax or fax-to-email. That invoice can still land on a printer if you must smell toner in the morning.

• Much cheaper. Plans start as low as $5–$15/month. Bonus: no paper jams.

• Mobile friendly. Send a fax from your phone, your laptop, or your smart fridge (okay, maybe not that last one… yet).

• Receipts and confirmations sent by email—no need to babysit the machine.

❌ Cons:

• Still faxing. It's 2025. We can 3D print food but we still fax PDFs?

• Less “official-looking” in old-school circles. Some folks still want that choppy transmission noise to feel secure.

• Needs internet. If your Wi-Fi dies, your documents might too.

🤷‍♂️ Why Are We Still Faxing?

We live in a world with instant messaging, video conferencing, and file sharing that works faster than most people’s attention spans. And yet—faxing survives.

Industries keeping it alive:

• Healthcare: Because HIPAA loves a good fax (it’s secure and point-to-point!).

• Law firms: Faxed signatures are still binding. Nobody knows why.

• Government: Bureaucracies that still think “electronic mail” is futuristic.

• Finance: Banks are suspicious of emails. They prefer faxes and handwritten memos on papyrus.

  
  

💰 Cost Comparison

🖨️ But I Still Want to Print It!

Good news, paper lovers. With E-Fax, you can still live the dream of killing trees:

• Auto-print faxes: Route them straight to your printer if you’re missing that hot toner smell.

• Digital archive + print: Keep a copy in your email, and print only what you really need. (Novel concept, right?)

This way, you get all the benefits of going paperless, without actually going paperless.

🧾 Conclusion: Should You Fax in 2025?

If you have to fax, go e-fax. Unless you have a copper fetish or enjoy staring at a flashing red light that says "ERROR: PAPER JAM."

For most folks, E-Fax is the way forward—cheaper, faster, and you can still send your faxes to the printer to simulate the old days. Everyone wins. Except your poor copper landline. It's probably just sitting there, waiting for a call that will never come.

If you're still using copper fax, or need to add an E-fax to your business, reach out by phone: 801-373-7779, email von@hello1983.com, or using this link: