A V.92 Fax Modem Card

History

In the early 90's small business PCs commonly had a PC-based fax/modem card and fax software (typically WinFax Pro). Now largely replaced by E-mail, PC-based faxing with a fax/modem is more-and-more a rarity. Where faxing from a PC is required there are a number of Internet-based faxing alternatives. So, while it's still common to see businesses with a one or more traditional fax machines churning out pages, they are often surrounded by a forest of PCs processing even more E-mail.

PC Faxing

Computer users may set up a PC fax/modem with card, phone line access and software, or use a service similar to printing from a PC or sending an E-mail message.

Fax integration is available in unified communications (e.g. E-mail, Voice Mail and Fax managed together), in a number of Hosted PBX products where standard features allow users to send a fax by using the fax phone number as the address of a E-mail message, and receive incoming faxes via E-mail with the Fax content presented as a PDF attachment.

The use of fax/modem cards after the 1990s became a last resort, as compared to a high speed Internet connection. Few users saw a reason for the effort of making this old-technology approach work.