Replacement for a Sharp UX-P200 FAX machine (esp. with cheap film)?

November 24, 2004 11:48 AM

Faxfilter: Our small office (10 people) has just unanimously agreed to take our Sharp UX-P200 fax machine out into the street, stomp on it and set it on fire. Does anyone have any recommendations for a replacement? It's pretty heavily used, probably 10 - 20 ingoing/outgoing faxes per day. One of the (many) issues with the Sharp was that while the machine was cheap, the carbon film cost was ridiculous. We're a small non-profit - so cost is very important. Thanks!
posted by mygothlaundry to technology (11 comments total)

Have you investigated having faxes come straight into your PC? I beleive XP contains a utility for doing this.
posted by Keith Talent at 12:35 PM on November 24, 2004

Monochrome laser printers are by far the cheapest output device on a per-page basis. If you receive a lot of incoming faxes and want to print them all, look for a laser fax
posted by b1tr0t at 12:40 PM on November 24, 2004

how about one of those all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier things that HP or some other similar company makes? they use standard paper and toner cartridges rather than the carbon film. if you do go this route look for the laserjet rather than inkjet plain paper fax, as the inkjet will cost you an arm and a leg for ink and isn't designed for the volume you do. the HP LaserJet 3030 for example is a combo laserjet printer/scanner/copier/fax with document feeder that can handle around 7000 pages a month. only $500...
posted by caution live frogs at 12:41 PM on November 24, 2004

There are too many documents that need to be signed and then sent back for that to work. We tried it for a while but, as backwards as we are - and we're pretty durn backwards - it turns out there are people even behind us on the technology evolutionary scale, and they want faxes. So we need a real fax machine.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:43 PM on November 24, 2004

Oops, the "need to be signed comment" was replying to Keith & I didn't see the next one! Thanks for the recommendations. We have a couple laser printers that are working fine, so we really just need a stand alone fax.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:46 PM on November 24, 2004

Ten to 20 faxes a day constitutes "heavy use"? Did you lose a couple of zeros there?
posted by Mo Nickels at 12:47 PM on November 24, 2004

I would highly recommend looking into a service such as MAxemail.com, which, for about $6/month, will send you received faxes as pdf attachments. Sending is still an open question, but the savings in paper, time, etc can be wonderful.
posted by ParisParamus at 12:47 PM on November 24, 2004

Just get a laser fax machine. When your running an office and your sending contracts and documents back and forth, you don't want to be messing around with e-fax and scanning and what not.

We've had pretty good luck with an older version of this Panasonic. But I bet there all pretty much the same around the price point.

One toner lasts 5000+ pages and it can do printing and copying if you want it to.
posted by PissOnYourParade at 1:40 PM on November 24, 2004

I second the laser fax. I work in a largish office (400 people) we have multiple fax machines spread across the floors, they're all laser fax units. :) Work great, the cartridges aren't the cheapest ($60-$70) but last 5000+ pages, so your price per page is about as cheap as you're gonna get. (The all-in-one units with the inkjet cartridges cost much more per page)
posted by defcom1 at 3:57 PM on November 24, 2004

Get your laser fax from brother, inexpensive and rock solid machines in my experiance. We have several that work very well.
posted by madmanz123 at 4:55 PM on November 26, 2004

As the owner of a very small business, I'm a big fan of eFax. They charge $12.95 per month, and they provide you with your own fax number, so you don't have to dedicate one of your landlines for inbound faxes. They have local numbers in many major metro areas. The secret is to use the service for receiving faxes only. Incoming faxes are forwarded to an email address (actually up to 5 email addresses). My assistant receives all faxes and forwards them via email to the person(s) who need them. We then print faxes on our large network printer (at a very low cost per page) on an as-needed basis. I save faxes in my email client for future reference. And best of all, I can easily receive faxes via email while I'm travelling. We use an HP LaserJet 3150 for outbound faxes, but any decent page-feed fax machine would work. So the non-geeks in the office have no trouble whatsoever.
posted by yaquina27 at 10:30 AM on November 27, 2004