Technology is changing the world very rapidly, especially the business part of it. Once, it was up to the managers to oversee their employees, but now all you have to do is choose the best PC monitoring software and everything is automatic and easy. This trend of making things more convenient doesn’t end with monitoring tools.

Fax machines have been around in the business community for decades. They are a great way to transmit printed information from one location to another. By simply placing a paper document in one machine, the document is copied and transmitted to another machine elsewhere in the world. However, today there are newer, more advanced ways to send printed information from one place to another – with the invention of the Internet comes updated, electronic technology like Internet fax.

A traditional facsimile machine was considered the quickest method documents could be sent from place to place prior to the invention of email. A fax machine is basically composed of two devices – a copier and a modem. First, the copier takes an electronic picture of a document. The modem then sends the photograph over phone lines to other modems. The modem on the recipient’s fax machine receives the image and prints the image on paper. One downside to traditional faxes is that they require paper from both the sender and the receiver.

Compare this to today’s modern computer setup. Replacing the copier is a scanner, which takes the electronic image and saves it directly to a computer. No paper required. Using this method is more advanced and all the necessary equipment is at your finger tips. Similarly, an Internet fax allows the user to send documents electronically. Still some businesses may desire to have both a hard copy and electronic document. Faxing over the Internet creates a single solution for both formats.

It is a software program, generally on a third-party server. To send a fax you first connect to the provider’s website or accesses their software locally on your computer. Scanned or typed documents are attached. Then with just a couple of clicks the documents are printed on the recipient’s fax machine.

Receiving an Internet fax is easy and efficient. The fax number you get from the fax provider will receive faxes just like a traditional fax. However, instead of a piece of paper, the fax can be received electronically as an email or retrieved online. It commonly works like this – first, there will be an email from the Internet fax provider indicating that a fax has been received. The documents faxed will show up as attachments on the email. Then, the documents can either be printed, or merely viewed online. There are a variety of online fax services that cater to the needs of your business.