I find it astounding. Modern businesses simply shouldn't pay for this kind of duplication. By handling your business interactions as bytes and bits, you'll save dollars and cents. Toss out your fax machine along with your printers. Incoming faxes are converted to TIFF files and sent to your e-mail inbox.
Delete junk faxes and then convert the useful ones to PDF for long-term storage.
Best of all, if you only want to receive faxes, and if you don't care about where your fax number is based, the service is free. Try it out and let me know how you fare. Not to worry. Moore's Law should take care of the hardware issue over time, bringing us devices that are much more powerful and portable. Readability is being addressed in the short term by technologies such as Adobe's CoolType and Microsoft's ClearType .