[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





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