Am I alone in hating fax technology? Time was when I used it, and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but now?

Sending or receiving faxes is one gigantic pain in the ass.

I don't own a fax machine. I had one, but it burned out in the late 90s, and I've gotten by without one since, and because I think the technology is outmoded, I'm sort of a neo-anti-Luddite against the things, if that's the right word.

But the rest of world has not changed with the times. This is especially true in the world of bureaucracy, of banking, of government. For some reason, these people simply cannot or will not use or allow email for documents of any importance. Most likely, the lawyers have told them that only a fax satisfies the obsessive bureaucratic need for documentation as to dates, times, places, and only a fax can be verified to a standard which will survive the scrutiny of a court or government hearing.

What that means is that when I am forced to deal with bureaucratic transactions, I have to use fax technology, and fax technology and computers have just never meshed very well. To send a fax, first you need a scanner to scan it into a faxable format. Then you need decent fax software. (The free stuff that comes with Windows never seems to work properly.) On top of that you must have a dialup modem, and if you have a computer plugged into a DSL telephone line, you have to unplug the DSL modem, plug the phone cord into the regular dialup modem, and then get a "port in use" error code, which means rebooting the computer so it's no longer on the network but just hooked up to the dialup modem. Assuming that the fax at the other end answers, you then wait and hope the handshaking business works out and the fax goes through.

To receive a fax is even more aggravating. You must tell the bureaucrat at the other end when you will have your computer turned on with the dialup modem on, and the fax software open and ready to receive faxes. Then you must hope that the fax machine will call back when promised. Otherwise, it's someone else saying "HELLO? HELLO?" while your computer spits electronic garbage in his ear in an attempt to perform an obscene "handshake" with a disgustingly backward fax machine.

(I HATE THIS PROCESS, OK?)

So now I'm thinking of reverting to primitivism and actually going out and buying a fax machine at an office supply store.

If anyone has come up with a better way of coping with stubborn medieval technology, I'd love to hear about it. I know of online faxing services like eFax, but they cost money, and I doubt they're easy to use to receive faxes or fax scanned documents. I could find no such thing as a DSL or cable fax modem, although I don't understand in theory why some genius couldn't come up with such a thing.

As it turns out, I am not alone:

Does anyone ever fax anything? Faxing seems like its been around for almost as long as the phone and is like... useless to almost everyone in the world. I remeber when my dad was living in California, I had to fax him my homework so that he could check over it. I hate how faxers are impossible to set up, its nearly impossible to get the fax, the phone and dial-up internet all set up and working in one room. Then, when you try to send someone a "fax" they have to hang up the phone, turn on the faxer, and then like set the piece of shit machine to recieve a fax. Then, you type in thier number, hit "send". 3 seconds later the guy your sending it to's phone starts ringing, he has to let it ring for the fax machine to pick it up, little does he know his wife is up staires, she picks up the phone, and I can hear her voice in my fax machine as she swaers into the phone because of the obnoxious "K$wriuqw4h fiw3u yt934t98yarlituh3q94" noise that she is hearing. So then the guy that you are sending it to is waiting there, still thinks it goona come. You call him back but he doesnt pick up because he thinks its you sending the fax again because it didnt work the first time. So the phone rings 23 times, the retarded fax machine finally picks it up so the guy you are sending it to can hear your voice saying "Hey You there?" in his fax machine!(between all of this the dial-up internet and phone line you have is completely useless and you always get that fucking dialing tone) So then you hang up on his fax machine cause you cant hear him but he can hear you. So your friend decides he is going to call you back, while you think you might as well try him to send the fax again, so you send the fax, and he picks up the phone just in time to get the "jhnalw4io8rn l4u thbw9p48ht p9834htp" noise and he thinks his phone line is now busted because he couldnt dial out.

Another fax hater puts it this way:

The fax machine is evil. They should be eliminated from the planet!