If you have a voice-capable modem, there are a number of options (I
like Fax Talk Communicator -
www.faxtalk.com) for software which will
allow your computer to act as a combined speaker phone, answering
machine, and fax machine. However, none of these packages offer a
particularly neat solution if you also want to be able manually to
pick up calls on another phone (or install an answering machine) on
the same line.
As Hal has noted, if you are using "distinctive ring" to distinguish
between fax and voice calls on the same line, your best option is to
use hardware to separate the two "streams" before the computer sees
them. You can then set the computer to auto-answer the fax calls while
you (or a separate answering machine) answer the voice ones.
Is there anything I can do to have faxes received automatically, rather than
manually as I do now, using Windows XP when voice mail is on the same phone
line? Maybe MightyFax allows this?
Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.
Peter R. Fletcher
