Fax machine features you won't want to do without

While all fax machines may seem the same, the difference between a good purchase and a great purchase is in the details. Here's a rundown on the features to look for beyond price.

Not all faxes are equally user-friendly. Find one that is. Probably the most often-overlooked detail concerns how faxes are handled. Having to flip the page order of incoming faxes so they can be ordered correctly is a pet peeve of mine. Think about it, do you go to McDonald's and ask for a burger and have to shuffle the bun and the burger in the right order before you can eat it? Thankfully, some fax machines do print incoming faxes face down to avoid the need for the fax shuffle. Also look for well-designed incoming and outgoing fax trays so you are not barraged with a flurry of papers that need to be sorted.

Having a fax machine with a healthy-sized paper tray is also important. Look for one that doesn't need replenishing more than one to two times a week. Any more than that and you risk having an empty paper tray during the night or on weekends. A fax equipped with memory to handle those out-of-paper moments is a very useful feature to have as backup and adds little to the overall cost.

If you like saving money, go with a fax machine that can transmit at faster speeds. I recommend looking for a fax machine that can transmit at 14,400 bits per second (bps) and that utilizes the Modified Modified Read (MMR) compression standards. Faxes will be sent at least 50 percent more quickly than 9,600 bps fax machines, assuming there is another 14,400 bps fax machine on the receiving end. Offices that send a lot of faxes will appreciate the lower phone bills as well as the increased availability of the fax. While there are 33,600 bps machines around, they are not widely available, which means that theoretical speed is rarely attained.

If you're thinking about a multifunctional device, find one that has a universal serial bus (USB) port. Parallel port connections are slow and should be avoided whenever possible. And make sure you find out whether a PC is required to start it up even if you simply buy a multifunctional device as a standalone fax machine. I made that mistake once and had to scramble around to find a Windows-based PC when our office only had Apple Macintoshes at the time.

There is still one fax feature that I have not yet seen, though. Have you ever picked up a phone call and heard the sound of a fax trying to connect through and hung up only to have the fax try again and again? I would love to be able to hit the # button and cancel that incoming fax and send a message back to the faxer that they reached a phone number, not a fax number, and to try dialing again. If you know of a fax that can do that, please let me know.