The fax masters - evaluation of nine fax-software packages - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Feb, 1995 by Russell Letson

It's inescapable: Whether you conduct business in an office or at home, you have to fax. But for many of us, even a fancy, feature-laden fax machine may not be enough for what we do. What we send out over the phone lines often begins in the computer--not just word processor files but charts, graphics, spreadsheets, and e-mail messages. Often, we have to combine these elements into compound documents, so it makes more sense to send them directly from within the computer than to print them and feed the out-put into a standalone machine.

For bedrock-basic computer faxing, of course, a word processor and a data modem combined with a service such as MCI Mail will suffice. But pretty soon you may need to include a spreadsheet or a copy of an e-mail message, or you may eventually want to fax copies of your carefully formatted and illustrated product list to a dozen or so people in your customer database. Once that happens, the bare-bones method won't cut it anymore.

Shine a Lite

Entry-level computer faxing has become the realm of the "lite" software applications that come bundled with practically any fax modem. These programs generally offer what can be called the core features: support for Class 1 and 2 and CAS (communications applications specifications) fax modems; the ability to print to fax from other applications; a quick-fax function (often a cover sheet with a note) with a rudimentary text editor; scheduled and broadcast transmissions; logs of faxes sent, received, or scheduled; and at least one customizable cover sheet.

When it comes to full-fledged fax programs, often the big siblings of lite versions, other features are nearly standard. All but one of the packages in this roundup, for example, offer optical character recognition (OCR) of received faxes, and almost half include a scanner interface for a direct link with the software; your computer, therefore, acts as a complete fax machine. Support for a variety of file formats is spotty, but most will import and export the more common graphic file formats (BMP, PCX, and TIFF). They also usually import phone book data from ASCII or dBase files.

Performance is not much of an issue with these products. Each will send, receive, and log faxes in reasonably good order and as quickly as your hardware will let them.

Instead, the crucial issues are compatibility and stability, hardware support (modems and scanners), ease of use, and the bells and whistles of the fax/telecommunications world-sophisticated file management and the ability to match the functions of high-end fax machines.

Fax management can get as elaborate as you can stand it, from simple transaction logs to indexed systems that allow you to file, sort, and track documents according to sender, subject, time, or assigned keyword. One of the more useful features in this area is the thumbnail view--miniature versions of faxes themselves, so that logs and file-selection menus don't have to be lists of arbitrary file names or easily forgotten keywords. The best packages also support broadcasting, which lets you send faxes to a group of people in a single operation, and remote retrieval, which provides access to all received faxes even if you're on the road.

Another reason for keeping track of faxes and related files is so you can perform what might be called fax processing--assembling new faxes from various sources, such as previously received faxes as well as text, graphics, or spreadsheet files. Much of this is adhoc communication--attaching a graph to a quick note and zipping it off--but the possibilities for automating business communications are endless.

One product, Cheyenne Communications's Bit-Ware 4.0 for Windows, did not ship in time to be included in this review. Bitware, which at press time was scheduled to be available early this year, will offer such high-end features as fax-on-demand, fax broadcasting, voice mail (which requires a voice modem), and pager notification.

Tread Carefully Although the features race has produced some strong and versatile programs, it's not all roses in the fax world. Our testing was plagued by installation and compatibility problems, some of which may have stemmed from installing multiple packages on one system.

Also, support for the CAS modem standard in particular was varied, which is bad news for anyone who has an older modem. It looks like what was meant to be a device-independent fax/modem standard is being phased out by Class 1 and 2 support.

Other problems arose from the practice of making unannounced changes in the SYSTEM.INI or WIN.INI files, including programs that substitute their communications drivers for whatever is present. Well-mannered programs warn of such procedures and offer the option of keeping your old setup.

These glitches notwithstanding, if your fax needs go beyond sending out the occasional one- or two-page text file, you should be able to find a solution in one of the nine programs reviewed here.

Data Fax- 4.1 e

Rating: ** 1/2

WIN

Trio Information Systems's DataFax sports a slightly unusual organization. What you might take to be the main program, DataFax Office, handles only administrative jobs (maintaining logs, statistical tracking of fax activity, file management, cover sheet design).