Fax machines

Fax machines are mostly inactive so it is important to choose one with a low standby energy rating.

• When selecting fax machines, follow the general principles for buying green office equipment set out in the general principles for buying green office equipment section.
• Buy a plain paper machine. If it's a laser or LED machine, make sure your warranty covers reusing paper. Otherwise, choose an inkjet machine.
• For [Fax]]/printer machines, make sure that the model you choose is more energy-efficient than running two separate machines would be.
• Ensure the fax machine has toner- or ink-saving modes such as draft or "econosave" and ask for documentation of the amount of toner and ink saved in these modes.
• Before faxing something, think about whether you can communicate using email instead. If you can't, here are some energy and paper saving tips.
• In many offices, faxes are transmitted with a separate cover sheet and individual transmission or status reports are printed. This increases the amount of paper used by one-third. You can avoid the problem by using stick-on labels or rubber stamps for the front pages of faxes and writing in the name of the recipient, the date and the number of pages being sent.

Some of the features that differentiate one fax machine from another include the following:

• speed: fax machines transmit data at different rates, from 4,800 bps to 28,800 bps. A 9,600-bps fax machine typically requires 10 to 20 seconds to transmit one page.
• printer type: Most fax machines use a thermal printer that requires special paper that tends to turn yellow or brown after a period. More expensive fax machines have printer that can print on regular bond paper.
• paper size: The thermal paper used in most fax machines comes in two basic sizes: 8.5-inches wide and 10.1-inches wide. Some machines accept only the narrow-sized paper.
• paper cutter: Most fax machines include a paper cutter because the thermal paper that most fax machines use comes in rolls. The least expensive models and portable faxes, however, may not include a paper cutter.
• paper feed : Most fax machines have paper feeds

so that you can send multiple-page documents without manually feeding each page into the machine.

• autodialing: fax machines come with a variety of dialing features. Some enable you to program the fax to send a document at a future time so that you can take advantage of the lowest telephone rates.

As an alternative to stand-alone fax machines, you can also put together a fax system by purchasing separately a fax modem and an optical scanner. You may not even need the optical scanner if the documents you want to send are already in electronic form.