peter said:
Is there a fax machine that can receive fax without having to turn on a PC,
store the fax in memory that can be transfer to a PC later?
It's hard to find this feature by looking at product spec. Is there a
special name for it?
I don't have a specific answer for you, but this sounds like a question that
you should address to a knowledgeable dealer (probably not CompUSA or the like)
or by email to a manufacturer. There are two parts to your question: (1)
having the fax machine store the fax and (2) letting your PC access the stored
fax.
(1) Almost all fax machines these days have some amount of memory, and many --
even relatively low end machines -- will store some number of incoming fax
pages in memory if the paper and/or toner has run out. Typically, they will
then print out the stored faxes when you add more paper or toner. Some (e.g.
OKI 4580) have a "memory reception mode" that stores incoming faxes in memory
even if paper/toner is present.
(2) Again, many (most?) fax machines have a (optional?) PC interface. Although
you could try to dig the information out of on-line manuals, that's likely to
be tedious and unrewarding (for example, a marketing description of the Brother
MFC 4800 says that you can "View faxes on your PC before printing to eliminate
irrelevant faxes" which sort of sounds like it might do what you want, but I
couldn't find that feature in the MFC 4800 User Manual).
What I suggest is that you pick a fax machine that you can afford, check the
amount of on-board memory it comes with (again using the OKI 4580 as an
example, the spec sheet says that it comes with 4MB which it claims is good
for "up to 320 fax send/receive pages), and then either go to a dealer for that
brand or send a message to customer support and ask if you can retrieve faxes
stored in memory via a PC interface.
PS. I have no connection with Oki or knowledge of their products. I just
picked that one more or less at random.
