OT: Sharing a telephone line with a fax machine?

[Kamog]

This is way off topic, but I would like some help on how to connect a fax machine to a telephone line with voice mail, and have everything work. Today I went to the store and I was considering buying an all-in-one printer/copier/scanner/fax machine. I don't have a printer, scanner, or fax machine right now, but occasionally the need arises for me to either print, fax, or scan. An all-in-one machine would be convenient to have at home.

So at the store, I talk to the friendly salesman, who tells me that if I want to receive faxes then I will need a separate phone line. He said that if I put the machine on the same line as my regular phone, then if a fax comes in it won't know whether to go to voice mail or to the fax, and it won't work. Getting a second phone line would be expensive and not worth it since I would only need to receive a fax maybe a couple of times a month, at most.

I wondered if the salesman is right. It seemed odd to me that there's no way to get this sort of setup to work.

What do you think? Is there some way to set things up so that an incoming call will go to the fax if it's a fax and go to voice mail if it's a telephone call?

[Suicide Junkie]

A fax is just a telephone call, like dial-up modems.

If you know a fax is coming, you can just unplug the answering machine, and plug in the fax. Then once its done, put things back.

You might even be able to buy a little A/B switch box to quickly do that from radio shack. If not you could always make one out of duct tape and loose wires

[Fyron]

You only need a dedicated phone line if you want to be able to receive any fax at any time (such as if you were running a business). Otherwise, do as SJ said and only hook up the fax line when you are expecting a fax.

[Kamog]

Thank you for the quick replies. Since I only need to receive faxes occasionally, I'll follow your advice and connect the fax only when I need it.

I suppose that eventually, if I decide to get a cell phone then I'll just use that for voice and I could leave the existing land line hooked up to the fax. I use the same phone line for dial-up internet as well, but I'm not going to need to use the fax the same time as the internet.

[Suicide Junkie]

Yeah, if you're already sharing the line two ways, a third way won't make much difference to you

[geoschmo]

There are devices on the market that will automatically switch from teh phone line to the fax line when it senses an incoming fax signal. Here's one... I'm sure you'll find more if you google it. Try "fax phone switch" or something like that.

[Caduceus]

We have an HP3150 at home which I have been fairly happy with.

There was a paper-feeding issue which was settled in some sort of mass class action suit, to which I received a plastic doo-dad to stick to it which has corrected the problem. Then my wife was dusting it and it sucked feathers into the machine. Fortunately, this has cleared up over the last few months. But occasionally a feather will be spit out.

Don't plan on super-high quality scans unless you're willing to pony up the money.

The HP sits on the line and is set only to answer the phone if we manually tell it to. We have one line and DSL.