You can fax out, but after that you shutdown you PC, off your modem, then how can people reply you with fax?

It is not possible for you to turn on your PC and modem 24 hours while not using it!

So, it is still more economical to have a conventional fax machine which can be a normal phone too.

I wonder how many people do seriously use winfax?

Honestly, I really have no idea. But I have the feeling that there are VERY few people who use this. There has been the idea of having fax services over the WWW. Such services include eFax. However, I never really found it to be very useful. We have email, instant messaging, and a whole lot of other ways to communicate. Why would we need fax?

The use of a fax is best used when once in a while contacting a business that does not use or does not advertise the use of the internet. You can transmit a document that would otherwise have to go through snail mail to reach them. You can always leave your e-mail addy on the document as a method to contact you if necessary.