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Re: VOIP - What Works? What Doesn't?



"Jim" <alarminex@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3032765.2776.1332620869573.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@xxxxxxxxx
On Friday, March 23, 2012 9:26:49 PM UTC-4, Chris wrote:
> On Friday, March 23, 2012 6:13:43 PM UTC-7, Bob La Londe wrote:
> > I've been playing with voice over IP telephone service for the
> > last couple
> > days.  I've had a plain old Magic Jack plugged into a USB port
> > on my desk
> > computer for a while now (2 years maybe).  I use it as a spare
> > line, and for
> > the tackle and mold making sideline business.  It works pretty
> > decent.
> > Sometimes its a little tinny sounding, but as long as my
> > Internet works it
> > seems to work.  Since I upgraded my internet service a while
> > back it has
> > worked much better.
> >
> > Well, I decided to check out 8x8.  They are a service claiming
> > to provide
> > professional grade VOIP services.  I know of businesses much
> > larger than
> > mine who are using them.  So far I am not impressed.  They setup
> > my account
> > wrong, and they couldn't fix it.  They had to send me another
> > piece of VOIP
> > equipment to get it to work the way they set it up.  Its so I
> > can send faxes
> > using an ordinary analog fax machine over their VOIP service.
> > It doesn't
> > work.  (I haven't had an actual fax machine hooked up in years
> > for my
> > business, but I need to test everything.)
> >
> > They claimed to make some adjustments to their compression
> > codecs, and it
> > supposedly tested in both directions, but I never received a
> > test fax.  When
> > I tested further just to make sure hardware was good I plugged
> > both the fax
> > machine and the fax modem into a plain old telephone service
> > (POTS) line.
> > Both pieces of equipment worked fine on POTS.  Then on a lark I
> > decided to
> > plug the fax modem into the Magic Jack.  I don't figure there
> > was a
> > snowball's chance in heck of that working, but amazingly it did.
> > Then back
> > to the VOIP port from 8x8.  No joy.  Call goes through, I can
> > hear the fax
> > tones, but it fails every time.
> >
> > Sadly I must conclude that 8x8 is not quite were they need to be
> > just yet
> > for me to recommend them to my customers.  If they want a cheap
> > phone line
> > for occasional use I think a Magic Jack would be a better
> > choice.
> >
> > I've got three 8x8 VOIP adaptors sitting in my communications
> > room right
> > now.  All different models.
>
> Bob,
>
> On a bit of a side note, how has it been without a fax machine for
> so long?  Are you using something else like eFax instead, or just
> simply email and snail mail?
>
> I figure at least 99% of the faxes I get are junk mail, and I
> don't remember the last time I needed to fax something out (other
> than to start up accounts, but those are emailed now).
>
> And yet, it seems like it's some sort of necessity to have a fax
> machine to run a business.
>
> - Chris

Chris, I have a cure for your "junk" faxes.

I used to get all kinds of faxes from Delicatessen menus to porn.

I got fed up so I made 25 blank photo copies on my copy machine with
the cover open. That makes black pages on my machine. The next time
I got a fax, I copied down the telephone number. Then, late at night
when I thought that no one would be there, I faxed about 100 pages
of the black copies to them with the final page note saying .....

Since you continue to waste my paper and toner supplies, I thought I
do the same to you. STOP SENDING ME YOUR FUCKING FAXES!!!!!!!!!

I did that to about five of six of the worst offenders and the faxes
stopped. Obviously, turn off your fax at night so that they can't
return the favor.

============================================================================

Why waste you money on copier toner to make black pages??
Just use black construction paper.  Worked great last week.

The other thing that works is use a fax modem and then send their
junk fax back after scanning into a .bmp file.  Will break up that
one page into about 28 pages.  They usually get the hint.

I get next to no junk faxes any more since I don't publish my fax
number, except to customer or those that I want to receive.

Les



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