Why a Desktop Scanner Replaces a Fax Machine

A desktop scanner replaces a fax machine now, our cat, Tessa, is partly to blame.

Little did I know that today a desktop scanner replaces a fax machine. It was not readily apparent to me. My entire home operation for selling Sacramento real estate was set up to be self sufficient many years ago; when a device malfunctions, I tend to simply replace it. I’ve only had 2 fax machines in Sacramento, one that I took out into my back yard and literally beat to death with a hammer, a Panasonic fax machine. And my Brother 4100e. That happened 10 years ago!

I figured something must be wrong when I looked on the OfficeDepot website and noticed that my Brother 4100e was still a top seller, after all of this time. How could that be? Something was not right. A similar fax machine, one grade higher, cost twice as much and the main difference was it held another 20 pages in its document feeder. This seemed crazy.

OK, maybe OfficeDepot just did not sell enough fax machines anymore. I clicked on a few other websites and nobody carries much in the way of fax machines. That was a telling sign, a red flag. We have fax machines at my office. Heavy duty fax machines. My husband asked what I use a fax machine for. Well, mostly to fax listing documents to myself so I can forward them to others. That is a scanning function.

I already have a ScanSnap portable scanner that I bought years ago when short sales were hot. I could take that baby to seller’s homes and scan all of their tax returns, sensitive personal documents, directly to my computer. But since short sales pretty much dried up in 2012, I haven’t used my portable scanner. Fugitsu also makes a desktop scanner. A desktop scanner replaces a fax machine, and I never realized it.

Fortunately, I have several eFax services at my disposal, one of which is free. Why have I been paying AT&T $40 a month for a fax machine? The things we put up with when we’re a busy Sacramento Realtor. For starters, the document feed roller tends to stick and sometimes I have to stand there and manually feed each of my 30-some pages into the fax machine by hand. Not to mention, our cat, Tessa, long ago batted off and destroyed the document feeder guide plate.

The copy function isn’t working correctly because I need a new cartridge, and since I’ve never replaced the drum, that could explain why copies have a big long black line streaming down the front. To buy a new drum and new cartridge would cost more than to replace the fax machine. It makes sense to me that a desktop scanner replaces a fax machine.

Ah, the old days of those 1980’s thermal paper fax machines and how we could not live without them. It meant we didn’t need to drive our client’s houses, we could fax documents to their offices and later to their homes. How high tech. Now, we can’t live with a fax machine at all, not even a laser fax machine. Outdated, and of no use.