OK, I did some additional searching after I posted this. If you Google "cnet vista fax" you'll be directed to an excellent discussion board about this fiasco. Most of us got used to the fax software included with XP and took it for granted. When we got Vista Home Premium as standard with our Dells (I really wanted to stick with XP for reasons exactly like this, and the fact that my home wireless doesn't work with Vista - hello 50 ft of cat5 cable!), we got woken up to Bill Gates' cruel joke that home users don't need faxing capability built in to the operating system (if you spend $170 and upgrade to business edition you get faxing, so it's not like it couldn't be done). As noted on the cnet page and elsewhere, you can buy fax software for as little as $30, and that's not too bad. I haven't bought mine yet, but Snappy Fax seems to be a popular solution. Apparently, most fax software people haven't bothered to write software for Vista yet. I must complain about the way Dell's technical assistance personnel dropped the ball on this. All they had to say was, "Software not included, buy your own." But instead, they spent a couple of hours of my time and their time looking for hardware and software issues. Oh yes, the Dell tech guy who knows what's going on here has posted in several places that Dell's all in one printers come with fax software. So if you own one or plan to buy one, you're OK. But if you paid $100 for a fax/modem on your new Dell, go get your own software.