J2.com Improves Voice Mail, Fax Communication

I've been using this service for a very long time-- about four or five years (when I first signed up they were called Jfax). Overall I'm very happy with them. Here's how it works:

For a monthly charge (I pay $12.50; they have other plans) you get a phone number that you can use to receive voice mail messages and faxes. You can also use their service to send faxes.

When somebody calls that number they get a recording telling them that they can either leave a voice message or send a fax after the tone (they provide a generic recording for you but you can also customize it). When someone leaves a voice message, that message is sent to your email address as an attachment. You open the attachment and you hear the message from your computer speakers! When you get a fax, you see the fax after opening the attachment. This, to me, is way cool. When I first started using this service it was a very new kind of thing and it was almost like science fiction.

Sending faxes is equally convenient. It's all done through their website. You simply type in the cover page message and then attach a document from your computer. For example, if you want to fax your resume to a company, you need to have your resume on your computer already (for example, in My Documents or on the Desktop). Now here comes the only complaint I have about this company (and for me it's only a minor complaint): When you send someone a fax it takes about fifteen minutes for the other person to receive it. You do get a confirmation email in two or three minutes telling you it was sent, but for some reason it still takes a while for the other person to get it. Another consideration is that you can only send faxes that you can create on your computer (this is the case with any internet faxing system). So, for example, if you need to sign something and fax it you'll have to go find a regular fax machine. And you can't fax things that you wrote by hand. This isn't really a complaint for me because I haven't run into these situations (yet), but it's something one should be aware of.