The first thing is to get rid of incoming faxes. I signed up with a toll-free fax number with my VOIP service provider, Vitelity. This costs $3 monthly, plus a few cents for actual minutes of usage. I doubt I’ve ever used more than $5.

For a while I used Vitelity for outgoing faxes as well. You can e-mail a PDF or word document to the service and it’s sent out. Unfortunately there was no way to send direct from an application (using a virtual printer driver) which was what I wanted. Dragging PDFs and setting up e-mails was too many steps to remember the few times I send faxes.

Now I’m using a service called Fax1.com. It’s billed by actual usage with no monthly fee. I’ve loaded $10 into the account and never had to refill it yet. You can send from any application (in Windows) and it is Vista compatible.

The most common reason I’ve sent faxes recently is when I’m stuck somewhere and need to print a document off my Dash. I can forward an e-mail with a PDF attachment to my fax account and have it print out on any fax machine. Since just about every business has a fax machine it’s very convenient.

I also have found that using fax acts as a decent gatekeeper from sales people. Any time someone calls trying to sell advertisements or other crap, I simply ask for them to fax the information. 50% won’t bother.