How to use fax as scanner

Jewelry Discussion
1

Greetings: Recently read Charles Lewton-Brain’s article “Some PR Tools
to Have on Your Side”. It was very interesting indeed, with very
detailed ideas and instructions.

One thing which was suggested without further info though was on the
first page…"(snip)

I recommend a separate fax line on which you also have your internet
connection to your computer. A fax machine hooked to your fax line like
this also lets you fax things into your computer as a crude sort of scanner."

Can anyone give any details regarding how one would do this exactly?
And where it mentions “crude sort of scanner”, how does this affect
the quality, or what does it affect?

BTW, the article is in Tips from the Jeweler’s Bench. Great article!
Thanks Charles!

SB

2

SUSAN B. CARD wrote:

I recommend a separate fax line on which you also have your internet
connection to your computer. A fax machine hooked to your fax line like
this also lets you fax things into your computer as a crude sort of scanner.

Susan, I believe what CLB is referring to is that by having a fax
machine and a software fax program in your PC, you can “fax” yourself
say a sketch from your fax machine into your PC faxing program, and then
have it on your computer. This requires a fax program with OCR (optical
character recognition). I use winfax pro for this purpose and it works
well. The “crude” part is that it is not a high quality scan - more
like a fax really. Hope this helps, Mike

3

Thanks Mike:
My PC has Windows 95 installed with a fax software. All along,
I have been using my fax as a printer. If I did fax a sketch
into my PC, would I need to set up a file first? What would
the extension on the file need to be… .txt or .doc? Then
one would punch in the phone number on the fax and that’s it?
How can one find out if their fax program has OCR. I guess
"scanning" a photograph is out?! :frowning: Whatever these
procedures are, are they the same when using a regular
scanner?
Susan

4

I recommend a separate fax line on which you also have your internet
connection to your computer. A fax machine hooked to your fax line like
this also lets you fax things into your computer as a crude sort of scanner.

Susan, I believe what CLB is referring to is that by having a fax
machine and a software fax program in your PC, you can “fax” yourself
say a sketch from your fax machine into your PC faxing program, and then
have it on your computer. This requires a fax program with OCR (optical
character recognition). I use winfax pro for this purpose and it works
well. The “crude” part is that it is not a high quality scan - more
like a fax really. Hope this helps, Mike

Thanks Mike! well said.

Charles

Brain Press
Box 1624, Ste M
Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2L7
Canada

tel: 403-263-3955
fax: 403-283-9053
Email: @Charles_Lewton-Brain