[thelist] faxing online orders?
Todd Hakala
thakala at colorcraft-va.com
Sun Feb 24 23:32:22 CST 2008
Someone mentioned HylaFAX earlier, but it appears to have gone
unnoticed in all the other responses, so I'm bumping it.
HylaFAX:
http://www.hylafax.org/content/Main_Page
I used this for a while about 5 years ago for one of my coworkers that
was fax-obsessed. Apparently sending colorful PDFs via email wasn't
good enough, but 1-bit images of color originals was far better -- go
figure!
I found HylaFAX to be non-trivial to set up, as it has so many
options, but I was new to Linux back then, and I was using an older
version of HylaFAX. But once I got it set up, it was absolutely stable
as heck.
You can also set up your computer to print to HylaFAX as if it was a
regular printer. I haven't used any of these recently, so I can't
speak to how well they work. I have used one that ran under MacOS 9
for the aforementioned faxophile.
http://www.hylafax.org/content/Desktop_Client_Software
You already have the server running the web pages, right? Faxmodems
cost about $9 now. Pretty cheap solution. The most expensive part
would be the dedicated phone line for the faxmodem on the webserver.
But anyhow, here's my $0.02:
Auto-printing emails would be cheaper and far easier to set up, IMNSHO.
Can the sandwich shop owner's fax machine do double duty as a computer
printer? That way customers could still fax their orders, and the
internet people could have their orders printed to the same machine.
Design the e-order print output to look similar to a faxed order, and
the employees that grab the orders will have less trouble adjusting to
the additional capability.
Another thing that occurs to me is the hardware. At 500+ faxes per
week in a greasy kitchen environment, the sandwich guy must wear out
fax machines on a regular basis. Just make the next purchase a dual-
purpose fax/printer unit. If it is toner-based, it will probably last
longer than an inkjet machine, too.
Todd
More information about the thelist
mailing list