When will fax die?

I'm in the middle of a bad experience involving faxes. It goes like this: somebody was trying to send me an 11 page fax. I don't have a dedicated fax number, but I have successfully received faxes on my computer before. So, I sent her my office number, plugged the phone line into my laptop, and she tried to send the fax. She tried about 6 times, and it died part way through every time. I don't know if the problem was noise on the line (it's a shared phone line), or settings on my computer (though, as I said, I've been able to receive faxes in the past) or what, but the silly thing just would not go through.

Since I'm not associated with a research group, I don't have a group number I could give her, and I don't know if there's a general department fax number. (There probably is, but I don't know if students are allowed/encouraged to get faxes on it. I don't even know if the fax would find me if it were sent to the department.) I thought about trying the laptop at home (which would deal with the line noise problem, but not the computer settings problem, obviously) but instead I signed up for a free trial of efax, a service which allows you to send/receive faxes by email.

Now, my question is this: If I'm getting the fax via email anyway, why not just do it that way in the first place? Scanners are cheap these days. Everybody has email. Sending scanned documents via email allows you to use color, as well as using arbitrary resolution, as opposed to grainy black and white via fax. Most people's network connections offer higher bandwidth than their phone lines (at 19200 baud, or whatever fax machines use). Furthermore, the whole line noise thing is a non-issue, because packets are routed individually, and have error correction.

Maybe I'm just revealing the prejudices of my generation, but I think fax machines are antiquated technology, and should go away.