Here's my report on the k7 free fax receiving service--I set up a blind fowarding from my telephone number to the number in seattle washington that was assigned to me by k7 after a very fast and straightforward registration on their site.
IT WORKS!!
So now when someone sends me a fax, they dial my local phone number, which is a dedicated fax line. The fax line rings and then forwards to my k7 number, which "receives" the fax. I have directed k7 to both send me an email and make faxes available through their site. This is great because I can save on ink and paper for junk fax blasts, AND my fax receiving is portable and I am not stuck at one location, which is helpful when traveling away from my office fax machine. AND because it is free, k7 saves me several hundred dollars a year over using the pay per month services.
Two drawbacks: First, you must use the k7 service at least once every 30 days or the account will expire. However, if you're faxing into a forwarded number, that is not as big of a disaster as if you had printed their seattle number on your business cards. If your account is inactive, just sign up for another one. Second, unless you have VOIP or cable phone service or a no-long distance package (unlikely with a commercial land line), you will pay long distance telephone charges from your fax receiving phone number to the area code in seattle that you are forwarding to into k7's system. For me, from NY state to Washington state, this would not be financially good deal to pay the toll charges to washington, but I have VOIP on this line so the forwarding is free.
The quality of the received fax is a bit fuzzy, but overall, this is a great FREE program that gives the user 100% portability on their own (forwarded) fax number.
Thank you to Ender for this suggestion!
My next question: How do I figure out the fax modem/pc/printer/budgie software combo for a computer that doesn't have internet access and doesn't need k7's forwarding and mobility? I'm really new at this and the fax modem part has me stumped.