My [out-of-country] telephone service here in Mexico is with an OOMA box, and in the two years I've lived here it has saved me thousands of dollars in phone charges. It is rock-solid-reliable and the voice quality is as good as any POTS phone I've used. (It helps to have a good quality telephone connected to the OOMA box). If you are unfamiliar with OOMA, in a nutshell it connects to the internet on one side and a regular telephone on the other and through some kind of magic the telephone believes it is (in my case) in California. No charges of any kind for phone calls anywhere in North America; minimal fees (around three cents a minute) apply for overseas calls.

It would be marginally useful if I could use my computer to send faxes (I'd probably do that half a dozen times a year) but from what I understand faxes and digital phone lines don't co-exist very well.

Windows Vista has built-in fax software, but right up front they say it works with analog phone lines only. As few faxes as I'm likely to send, I don't want to spend money on this idea.

Do I have any simple, free options for sending faxes from my computer via my VOIP phone?

tanstaafl.

I fax over my old vonage device without issue, both with a dedicated fax machine and occasionally with my laptop's built in fax-modem. Neither causes a problem.

Could you use one of the internet fax services?

-jk

If you google "ooma fax" the first two hits says it can be done and what to fix if it doesn't work.

Yes. Maybe.

You have to have a dedicated fax machine, and sometimes it can be made to work, more often not, even with tweaking the QoS settings, adding the *99* prefix, and adjusting the dialing delay. OOMA+Fax+VOIP = pretty iffy, and I suspect that my internet connection here might be flaky enough that I would have no chance.

I guess what I'm looking for is fax software on my computer that will let me send/receive faxes. The whole OOMA thing may be irrelevant. Doesn't computer fax software take care of the dialing stuff, or does it have to work through a telephone? I am invincibly ignorant when it comes to such things.

Back in my '386 days with Windows 3.1, I remember being able to send faxes without a fax machine...

tanstaafl.

Back in the dark days of time, I remember a fax modem being something you could print to. In the modern era, I've found that just about anybody who wants me to fax them a form is quite happy with me scanning it to a PDF, and attaching it to an email.

"efax" still exists and still works.
Dunno what the non-Linux equivalent might be though.

Yeah, the fax software typically needs a fax modem. Most later modems did fax as well, so I'm sure your '386 had a fax modem.

There are internet services for sending / receiving faxes.

Probably what Dan says is best, just scan and email. I remember once trying out a service that I email to and it sends it on as a fax. I think this was pre-web days.

I still have a fax for my business, but it sees action maybe once a month (besides spam faxes). I keep it for some of my old school clients that still fax orders in. I'm almost entirely done with the postal system too...

There was once some legalease about signed faxes being considered legal documents where other electronically transmitted docs are not "legal".

Does it have to be via your VOIP phone? There are probably email->fax/fax->email gateways that you can use for a small fee.

My own history includes fax software, back in the day.

Physical fax machine or fax software using a local computer modem, the requirements of the 'phone line' are the same. The 'phone line' must not do compression to the audio signal for a 'fax call'.

Some (many?) VOIP services either automatically detect the fax calling tone (that 2.5 second periodic beeping after it dials) or you must use some special prefix or dialling mode to tell the VOIP system that this will be a fax call and it wil need more audio bandwidth than a regular voice call.

The more reliable (and probably easier) method is to utilize one of the Internet Fax services. They come in many forms, but in all cases the service connects to the actual phone network and delivers the fax using 'real' phone lines.

You simply use their software or whatever to get the document to be faxed to the service via the Internet, then out it goes. These services tend to provide VERY reliable fax delivery once the document gets to them.

Just make darn sure the phone number you tell them to send the fax to is indeed a valid fax number. Otherwise it can be rather relentless about re-dialling the same wrong number over and over trying to deliver the fax.

Most of these services also offer (for a fee) inbound fax to Internet delivery service. They provide a phone number unique to your account and any faxes sent to that number end up in your inbox, often as PDF pages.