Like telephones, office matters cannot go on smoothly and conveniently without fax machines. It is derived from the Latin word facsimile, which means "make similar", or to "make a copy of". Faxing is the process of encoding data, transmitting it over a radio broadcast or a telephone line and at the same time, getting hold of a hard copy of what was has to be sent to a remote location.

It is almost like a photocopying machine but instead of having another copy in your hand, the "photocopied" material will reach the person on the other line. These kinds of communication piece of equipment have a power over a wide range of advantages than the conventional postal mail also known as the "snail mail" since the receiver will get the copy right there and then. But like any other, its setbacks are seen on the quality of the hard copy received. This communication instrument is not new anymore, in fact it has been invented long ago but it only became a hit among people during 1980s.

Alexander Bain invented the very first fax machine in the year 1843. After some times, Samuel Morse began creating the very first telegraph machine and fax machine, which is highly similar from the technology of a telegraph. On the whole, fax machines of these days are equipped and "loaded" with image scanner, printer, modem, and of course, the usual is the phone.

The modem is the device that transmits the data over a phone line, the scanner on the other hand converts the printed document into a digital image, and the printer is the one that creates a hard copy of the document. There are some highly advance equipment that can be connected to the computer and those components like the printer, scanner, and modem can be used separately. This kind of fax machines is better known as the multifunction printers or MFPs.

What separate one fax machine over the other? You can look for its abilities like its class, group, data transmission rate and conformance with ITU-T recommendations.

They also make use of the standard PSTN lines and telephone numbers. When buying one, you need to consider the variety of its features that differentiate your preferred product over the others. One factor is its speed. This equipment transmits data at various speed rate of 4800 bps up to 28,800 bps. For 9,600-bps fax machine, it needs 10 to 20 to fully transfer one page. Moreover, their paper size may differ from 8.5-inches to 10.1-inches wide.

There are also some machines that only accept narrow-sized papers. The presence of paper cutter on these machines may also vary; those portable faxes and inexpensive ones may include this feature. Also, several of these make use of thermal papers that turn to brown after some time so you need to consider the printer type of the kind you wish to buy.

In addition to this, several fax machines possess a paper feeds in order to send multiple-page documents without manually feeding each page into the machine therefore saving much of your time. They are also available and accessible in a large variety of dialing features.

In fact there are others that will allow you to program the fax that you need to send at a future time so that you can take advantage of the lowest telephone rates. It is advisable to be a smart buyer. In that case make sure that you are considering every detail of your choice before buying any type of a fax machine to get the best out of the product.