NEC intros e-mailing fax / phone combo

It's not often we see advancements in the still-kicking fax machine, but NEC looks to have found a smidgen of room for improvement, with its new SP-NA640 model boasting at least one notable and still relatively uncommon feature. Namely, the ability to take any document and send it straight to a computer or cellphone via email as a regular image file. On the somewhat less productive front, the machine can also apparently take incoming email and print them out on the fly and, of course, it can be used as a plain old fax machine for those of you still clinging to the past. If that's enough to convince you to upgrade, you'll be able to grab one of these in Japan later this month for a yet to be specified price.

[Via Akihabara News]

[paragraph @ Nov 7th 2007 12:39PM]

Our big copy machines (Savins) do the same thing. You can scan to e-mail, and print out an e-mail ;)

But if this comes in at a reasonable price, say under $350, this is perfect for small offices, but anyone with something that have a big multifunction copier probably allready has a paper to e-mail function.

[TVGenius @ Nov 7th 2007 1:13PM]

This would be just the thing for my grandmother. Wait- scratch that, I'd have to teach her to use it. Already taught her how to use Google twice.

[Jason @ Nov 7th 2007 1:40PM]

I work for an Internet Faxing company but will leave out the name so this doesn't sound like a shameless plug. Simply put, you can already do email to fax and fax to email and no software is required. If this interests you, do a quick google search for comparisons and you'll find what you are looking for without having to buy a new weird phone.

[TIMMAH! @ Nov 7th 2007 1:53PM]

Yeah I saw something similar from Sharp a few weeks back. I just have qualms about having the scanned PDF going to someone else's servers. The email has to get constructed and sent thru someone's SMTP server right? In the Sharp machine's case it looked like it was going to be processed by a server at Sharp.com. I'm not sure I want my financial information and documents sitting on their servers...

[Sirocco @ Nov 7th 2007 4:49PM]

I think it's intended for those who don't have PC's.

[Mike @ Nov 7th 2007 7:04PM]

I work at a distribution center at a hospital and we've had fax machines that could do this for a while. No PC required =P

[Jamar @ Nov 7th 2007 7:27PM]

The other nice thing about this fax machine is that you can set incoming faxes to be converted to JPEG and forwarded to your cellphone or computer if you're not home. It's also a color scanner that connects to your computer by plain USB. Its built-in answering machine can also send voicemail to your cellphone or computer as soon as it's received. It needs to be connected to the internet by Ethernet for some of that, though.


Oh, and it's about $300 (online).