Is fax possible, both receive and send?

[City Builder]

Hello,
We occasionally have to fax out and receive faxes here, our normal fax machine is a Brother MFC-440CN printer/fax machine.

Will we still be able to send and receive faxes through our fax machine here or is Magic jack only going to be useful for voice phone?

I've read the official faq's on the situation and it says they don't officially support faxing, however give some minor information on what to try if it doesn't work.

Without it, theres no point to us using the magic jack since we do have to use the fax machine about 25 times per week sending (sometimes up to 100) and receive about half as much.

Thanks,

[rconn2]

my gf has her laptop's fax/modem plugged into her magicjack through a telephone line and it works. I would expect an external fax to also work plugged into a magicjack just like being plugged into a regular phone jack.

[Thunder]

I use an older model fax machine a Sharp UX-B700 and have no problems. I read by lowering the transmission speed to the lower setting sometimes fixes this problem. I am pretty sure my fax already has a low Baud rate since it's so old.

You can use this to test your fax machine.
1.Send a one page black and white text fax to 1-888-hpfaxme (1-888-473-2963).
2.When your fax is received by the HP Test Fax Service, we will generate a return fax to you within five minutes confirming that we received your fax. This verifies that you can both send and receive a fax with your fax machine.

[City Builder]

Hmmm, I seem to be able to fax out okay to the hp number and get the call back but the fax never actually comes through as completed when they return the call. I assume they fax back the same page or any page and not just call and hangup right?

I've been through the menu choices on the fax but don't see one where I can adjust the baud rate of the fax, I would assume its new enough that it will drop down in speed to accomodate for the connection.

[Thunder]

I just tried it three times. All three went through, but only received one back. Could be them though. They send you back a fax with the HP logo on it. Also make sure your ringer on your fax is set to ring only 2 or 3 times or MJs voice mail will pick up.

[City Builder]

Thanks, I've got it set to 3 rings, can't go any lower or higher due to telephone answering machine on same line, so fax picks up first, and sends it to the telephone answering machine, if the fax then detects the fax tone it disconnects the phones answering machine and starts receiving the fax.

When they called back my lcd display on the fax says receiving and takes about 1 minute of air time but then just drops the receiving and goes back to the brother logo.

I'll keep trying them though, it seems they would be receiving my fax else they wouldn't be trying to call back. Gotta make this work to make MJ be useful in my home/office environment else it's back to the regular $30.00/month phone company I'll have to go. I'll try the hp number a couple more times tonight to see if maybe its on their end somehow.

Thanks,

[Thunder]

When it works for me it says receiving and then displays FAXBACK on the lcd screen. Maybe try it without the answering machine, phone hooked up just for kicks.

[City Builder]

Thanks, I'll try that, it's been so long since I hooked up all of these wires and gizmos that I don't recall what wire goes where, which is why I just took the plug out of the wall and plugged it into the magic jack, but I'll try to straighten out what wires belong to what and give that a go. I'll also just fax my L.A. office tommorrow asking them if they can read the fax to just fax it back to me since theyre the ones I have to correspond with mostly on fax.

[City Builder]

Well, just can't seem to get it working with either fax machines we have here. We have two brother machines a mfc 440cn and a MFC 420CN.

I faxed to the hp number through the direct phone line and got the fax back acknowledging it went through okay and received their HP logo page. I then simply moved the line from the wall to the magic jack and tried again and again the fax picks up the call, says receiving for the longest time but never says "page 1" like it does when it's receiving the actual fax page.

I've turned it to basic compatibility which supposedly drops it's baud rate to 9600 which is what I guess is the lowest it will go but to no avail.

So unless someone else has some suggestions, maybe someone can tell me what I need to do to go about returning the magic jack (it's on the free trial for this fax reason specifically) since that's not part of the instructions on the magic jack foamie box.

Thanks,

[msiam]

also the error correction should be off.. with the lowest baud rate

[City Builder]

I talked to "Sunshine" on the live chat support and explained what I had done so far and the only other suggestion she has for me is to get a powered USB hub and plug the magic jack into that.

Can someone tell me if that is a feasible option (i'd really rather not go spending even more money if it's just blowing smoke my way.

I can't understand how a powered USB hub is going to make a difference on receiving faxes when I can send faxes just fine without needing one.

Also, for those of you that can send AND receive faxes, what fax machine are you using and what settings?

Thanks

[City Builder]

Nope, a powered USB hub didn't help anything either. Good thing I needed a powered USB hub anyway for all the thumbdrives I've got laying around and tired of swapping in and out all the time else I'd have something else to return to the store.

Unless there is some other suggestions then maybe I should be looking for an Internet based fax service that will receive faxes and send them to me as either pdf or doc files in email. I found one that allows up to 100 fax pages per month receiving for $24.00 a year (2.00 a month) and since I can send out fine with the fax and the magic jack, that may be the next best option.

I don't want to get into the fax services however that cost $15.00 a month as that pretty much defeats the purpose of my using the magic jack if I have to pay a bit less than half of our monthly telephone bill from Verizon to some other service just to use the magic jack, since it will already be an inconvienience to let everybody know that we now have seperate voice and fax lines (used to be all in one and voice mail would pick up, then if fax was detected it would hand off to one of the fax machines to get the incoming fax).

So, again unless someone else has some other suggestions, or can tell me what fax machine they are using that works for both send and receive (make and model and settings would be great), otherwise maybe people that are using the internet based fax services that are low cost (don't need more than 100 incoming faxes per month at this location) that has been reliable for them, that would be great.

Thanks for all the replies so far, it is appreciated.

[City Builder]

Okay, so the ones I was looking at may not be such a great idea, it's located at:
https://www.maxemail.com/max/lite.html
and only provides for a fax number in Chicago IL and most of my faxes incoming come from our Los Angeles, CA. office so it would be even more long distance than when they used to fax us to our local Palm Springs office. On the plus side, it's $24.00 a year, plus a $10.00 activation fee, so $34.00/ year plus the magic jacks purchase price and one year service of $55.00 is $89.00 for the first year then $43.00 each additional year assuming pricing doesn't go up (yeah right!). But I do have to wonder if the 60 to 75 pages of faxes that we receive in this office here would send the phone bill through the roof at the LA office!?!

The other one I've found was faxage at http://www.faxage.com/pricing.php?choos ... &outmins=0

They recommend the pro account at $7.95/mo for 150 (minutes) which concerns me since they charge per minute instead of allowing 150 pages, so get a bad connection to them and I could be paying substantially more than the advertised rate of $7.95/month They do have an Unlimited inbound fax service for $19.95 but then again that's just getting into the realm of keeping the real verizon phone line here, about half the cost, which Im trying to avoid by using the magic jack.

Most of the papers that we receive here are auto dealership repair order invoices which is a bit more than typical letters so they usually take longer to receive than a normal typed page letter would.

[SuperDuty04Ford]

EVERYONE, SEE MY POST IN "Using with a Fax Machine" ---- THIS MAY HELP YOU!!!

[tony]

Without it, theres no point to us using the magic jack since we do have to use the fax machine about 25 times per week sending (sometimes up to 100) and receive about half as much.
Thanks,

Hi,
With the volume you are sending/receiving, you might consider a subscription service such as myfax.com or send2fax.com. You get reliable sending and receiving without hassle. With these services, incoming faxes arrive by email. If your documents are documents are on the PC, you can send outgoing faxes direct from your PC without first printing to paper. With these services you have the option of a 1-800 number for incoming faxes at no extra cost.

[City Builder]

A good portion of our documents are stored on the PC, however there is also a fairly large amount of pages that have to be faxed out on Mondays that are annotated by hand and are print not on the computer.

How would that work with a subscription service?

The way we're currentl working it is that we receive faxes through a free commercial service (unlimited) and they send the faxes as tiff files to our email where we then print it out, since we can't get the magic jack to work with any of the fax machines we've tried with regards to receiving and we just use the office fax machines to fax out, sometimes it works on the firt try, other times we have to fax the documents a second time to get them to go through, but at least it's not costing us anything to fax it once or twice. Just a hassle if it doesn't go through the first time.

We've also learned not to do any report downloading at the same time we have to fax out as that will assuredly make the outgoing fax fail.

[rlbumich]

Hi all,

New to the forum. But I just set up my fax to receive faxes. This is what I did:

Went in setup

Advanced fax setup

1.Error Correction mode "off"
2. Fax speed "slow"

Received HP fax with logo.

BTW Great MJ forum
Now I can send and receive faxes. Thnx to postings!

[City Builder]

What fax machine do you have that is receiving properly?

[rlbumich]

HP Officejet 5610 all-in-one fax

[City Builder]

Im also curious if anybody else gets Comm errors when trying to fax out using magic jack?

There are times that I try to fax out and the first attempt will either fail with a comm error 2006 (brother MFC 440CN fax/printer/scanner) but go through when the fax goes to do an automatic second attempt.

There are also times that I'll be faxing out 10 pages, and it will take FOREVER to fax out the pages, and might get to about page 7 and then come back with some communications error on the screen, but on the second attempt will usually go through.

My guess is that if anybody is using the internet here for either work or maybe playing games then it really makes the magic jack fail for faxing.

However out of all the voice calls that I've made with it, (well over 1000 now), I think theres only been two times where the party on the other end had trouble hearing me and said that they could barely hear me but upon calling them back they said it was loud and clear.

Anyway, thanks for letting me know what fax your'e running, I might have to look into it, Im a bit fed up of having to fax out all our reports on Monday morning multiple times to each recipient.

[City Builder]

Pfft. Well Im not even going to try to understand this one...

I recently bought a new Gateway LX6200 computer for work and had no intentions of hooking up the magic jack to the new desktop computer figuring that my laptop uses less power to keep running 24/7 but since this thread was revived and I hadn't tried the MJ on the new desktop yet I figured I'd give it a try.

Sure enough it now received the fax back from the HP number. I can't explain why it would work on the new desktop but not the laptop as far as receiving faxes go but if it keeps it up I guess I'll just have to leave the new desktop running 24/7 as the phone system.

Really really strange because I tried the MJ on the old desktop computer I had here and it wouldn't receive faxes with MJ hooked up to that one but does with this one.

Hmmm go figure.

[rlbumich]

Hi City Builder,


You might want to try using a phone spliter-three way. I am using it with my MJ. I just plug the phone spliter into MJ along with my phone and HP 5610 phone line. I also run a business from home and need a faxing capabilities 24/7.

Hope you can get it working

[mhoffing]

[quote="City Builder"]Well, just can't seem to get it working with either fax machines we have here. We have two brother machines a mfc 440cn and a MFC 420CN.

I faxed to the hp number through the direct phone line and got the fax back acknowledging it went through okay and received their HP logo page. I then simply moved the line from the wall to the magic jack and tried again and again the fax picks up the call, says receiving for the longest time but never says "page 1" like it does when it's receiving the actual fax page.

I've turned it to basic compatibility which supposedly drops it's baud rate to 9600 which is what I guess is the lowest it will go but to no avail.

So unless someone else has some suggestions, maybe someone can tell me what I need to do to go about returning the magic jack (it's on the free trial for this fax reason specifically) since that's not part of the instructions on the magic jack foamie box.

Thanks,[/I check a while back with Brother and there the brother fax machines can not be slowed to anoter baud rate nor can the disable noise canceling. I believe the only way is to get another fax that has these features.]

[City Builder]

I have no way to explain it, however the fax works for both send and receive when I hook up the magic jack to my new gateway computer's usb port.

But... This morning I attempted to fax out just 10 pages to one of our stores, and it would get to about 5 pages and then give up, after that I couldn't even make a phone call using the magic jack.

Everytime I would dial out to a fax or a phone, it would give me the dialtone, I'd dial the number, and then it would go back to a dialtone. It did this through about 5 attempts at faxing out, and through about 5 attempted telephone calls.

Finally, rebooting the computer allowed the fax to be sent out, and the phone calls to be made.

My non professional opinion is that theres something wrong with the Magic Jack software, and the longer it runs. I've now got my gateway computer set to reboot at 3AM every morning in an attempt to keep the magic jack running like it should, both with faxing and phone calls.

[mberlant]

I've been through the menu choices on the fax but don't see one where I can adjust the baud rate of the fax, I would assume its new enough that it will drop down in speed to accomodate for the connection.

Your logic is idiotproof, but the idiots at Brother are stronger than your logic.

Brother has buried a parameter called "international" or "overseas" somewhere in the fax menu. Sometimes it sticks and sometimes it forgets and you have to set it for each fax - I can't nail down the logic.

To complicate this, the problem with fax modem speed negotiation is that it doesn't work over SIP. SIP's problem arises out of buffer underflow problems due to latency and retransmission of packets across the unreliable-by-design internet. Packets containing the negotiation information are tiny and zip right through, causing the two fax machines to believe that they can reliably hook up at 14.4kbps, which they can't, or 9.6kbps, which is iffy.

[City Builder]

Well, I've been finding lately it all depends on the quality of the line that MagicJack has to use, for example yesterday I couldnt fax out more than one page at a time and that was taking about 2minutes 50 seconds for each page then it would go on to the 2nd page and somewhere around 2 minutes would disconnect with a bad connection.

So i picked up the phone receiver to make a call and even on the voice it was iffy, and you could hear a clicking noise. Then there are other times that a fax will go through at about one page per 30 seconds or one page every 60 seconds. It's just all about how clean the connection is when I want to fax.

For voice MJ for the most part is acceptable, for faxing, it's iffy at best most of the time. I do have to make sure that we're not doing anything else on the internet when faxing to try to get the best results, if we are doing a lot of form entry at the same time we want to fax, I've experienced that the fax will usually fail at some point, I can't explain that other than to think that the beep, boop, beep noises that are normal internet transmission of data are close to what faxing might be.

[mberlant]

You just reminded me of another problem peculiar to MJ (when used as directed). With most VoIP services you use an ATA to interface with the service, so you are only contending with competition from other devices on your LAN trying to communicate on the internet.

With MJ, however, you also need to be sure that the MJ's hosting PC is kept quiet when you are doing something resource intensive, like sending a fax.

[City Builder]

Well the thing with that is that even though we used to have MJ hooked up to a laptop that did absolutely nothing else that to run MJ, I still had to keep my main PC that I work on all the time quiet during fax transmission.

Mostly however it was only during the intial fax connection. Once it starts to send the first page, I can do some regular form entry in internet explorer and send the forms to the server without interupting the fax connection, for the most part anyway, of course as is what seems normal with MJ and me, it's random as sometimes my PC has to remain quiet during the entire fax sending for it to send all the pages.

I think if MJ could reliably offer faxing, in and out, it would be a tremendous service, from what I've been reading this morning there are VOIP's that do offer fax, whether they are reliable or not I don't know, but don't really care to pay a monthly to find out.

[sggrant323]

I just set mine up. Did the test to HP. First time, error. Tried again without dialing 1. Worked fine.