The Fax service quite simply ‘enables faxing from your computer’. Though this would seem to be most useful for home users (businesses tend to have dedicated fax machines), it is not available in Vista Home Basic or Home Premium. The service enables both transmitting and receiving, as well as routing and archiving. If you search this site for fax you’ll find no fewer than a dozen KB-Links related to faxing in Vista, so at it’s best it has problems. Because the default setting is ‘manual’, there is little point to disabling this service.