Fax?! What is that?! (Just in case you really have no idea what it is, here’s the Wikipedia entry) As more and more is done online, fax has become less and less relevant to our lives. I don’t have a fax machine at the place I live for the last 11 years, and I rarely need to fax anything to anyone.

However there are always some backward companies that require you to either fax or use snail-mail to send forms back to them, as your hand-writing signature is the only mean of authentication. Some are kind enough to provide a Reply-Paid address, but of those who don’t I have to either (1) pay Australian Post 50 cents to send that form (2) find someone with a fax machine so I only pay a local call.

Worse, there are some companies that will only fax their documents to you. They probably print the whole thing out from the Word documents, before feeding them to the fax machines. Ever heard of “emails”?

An Internet-based fax to/from email gateway seems to be a nice solution to this problem. Don’t have a fax machine but glued to the Internet whole day? No problem! You can send your document (as an image, a PDF, etc) to this email address and it will be faxed to the destination number. Conversely, they will also receive fax for you and re-send to you as an email document.

Utbox is such company, who provides fax to/from email gateway service in Australia. Moreover, they have a one month / $5 credit free trail. I signed up earlier this week because I have one document that I need to fax. No credit card information required when you sign up.

$5 credit lets you send out 33 pages or receive 100 pages of fax. Good enough to fix up my immediate needs. You do however need to keep “topping up” your account to continue using their service (currently $60/year).