i would like to know how to get a fax number and set up a fax machine?

Easy, buy a fax machine. Order a phone line. Nothing special about the line.

There are a couple of ways of doing this:

1. The easiest (and cheapest) is to see if your local phone company has an answering service that will capture faxes. SBC charges us $8/mo for that and regular messages.

2. Simply ask for a second line from the phone company, hook the fax up, set it on auto answer.

3. There are services on the web like eFax that allow you to receive faxes on the web and pick them up anywhere, then just send them from an e-mail like interface.

You plug it into an active phone line. THe fax number will be the number attached to the active phone line.