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Get an internet air card linked to your cell phone plug into your PC card port on laptop, or just use email with your scanner to send / receive attachments or get an E-fax account or something similar so you can send / receive faxes over the internet, removes the need for an actual fax machine, received faxes show up on your email address Go to McDonalds or Strabucks or a Library and use their wi-fi for free

Ideally you should have an air card for internet access on the road.  You could try to make do with wifi to save money until you get established.  Depends on who you're working for and what their procedures are. 

To send and receive faxes get a MyFax account for $10 a month.  Faxes are sent and rec'd via email.  

Efax works great. I have used it for about 1 1/2 years now. It's free initially, but if you want to keep one number you will have to pay about $10 per month.

As usual, great suggestions and recommendations. I will check them all out...THANKS SO VERY MUCH, Tom, RJ, DD, Willis, and Ed!

Hi DD, If I get an air card, do I still need the MyFax account?.  We were planning on getting an air card, so know don't know if I need both.  I looked at MyFax and EFax....and MyFax looks as good or better at less cost.  Thanks for the help!

Oh...do some bosses supply air cards and/or fax software?

With efax do you often run into extra page costs in a typical working month?  Or to put it another way...is 130/30 pages per month usually enough when you are working a major storm?  Thanks!

Mickie

The air card gives you internet access for email, and for your employers claims management system, etc.

The MyFax account gets you a phone number that people with fax machines can send faxes to. MyFax converts the fax to a pdf file and emails it to you. You can also send faxes of course.

I switched from Efax to MyFax a couple years ago when Efax bumped the cost and cut the included pages.

You may have a fax machine and don't even realize it. It's probably in your PC now. You may have forgotten this when you moved to broadband, but most computers still ship with fax modems. Microsoft XP also includes fax software, although you may not have realized that either, since it's not part of the default installation. Fortunately, installing it is pretty painless.

Vista also includes the fax program with Visa Ultimate and Professional. If you have any other version of Vista you will have to buy the program. Essential Fax is $20.00 but there are a few others out there including Win Fax. These are a one- time cost.

You'll also need a phone line near your system. If there isn't one near your desk in the motel already, you can run a long extension cable from the motel phone. Check to see if you are charged for incoming calls. You may also use your broadband connection with a VOIP (Skype, Vonage, Magic Jack) service for the phone line.

The VOIP phone service may have reduced reliability. This is because signals from a fax are transmitted as analog sounds through a telephone line. When using a telephone service that route calls through the Internet or a digital telephone line, the sound signals must be converted to digital. A true reproduction cannot be attained from analog to digital and then back from digital to analog. Therefore, faxing is sometimes unreliable through VoIP or digital telephone lines.

To increase the reliability of digital faxing you can modify your fax machine or fax program in your computer. First turn off error correction on your fax machine or program and check to see if you have an improvement. Next, set the fax machine or program to use the slowest baud rate speed available. Increase the speed, checking at each speed to see if the faxes work.

Ed,

You're right that your computer may have fax capabilities built in. So, if you have a line with a dial tone you can send a fax.

What you're forgetting is that when you're working a storm, you'll receive ten or twenty times as many faxes as you send. They come from contractors and insureds. In order to receive those faxes you have to have a phone number available to the sender at all times of the day. That's what Efax and MyFax provide.

David

In addition to what David said above, if I need to scan a bunch of items internally for my files, I will fax them to my efax phone number, and they come to me by email as a pdf doc ready to be saved to the hard drive. It's much faster than loading individual items onto my scanner.

Excellent stuff...thanks!
Mickie