Faxing power - it's in the cards - Facsimile modems - Hardware Guide - Buyers Guide

Home Office Computing, April, 1992 by Crystal Waters

HOME-OFFICE COMPUTING has long held that fax/modems are among the best purchases you can make for your computer, whether you buy an external or internal unit. The ability to send and receive documents almost instantly has revolutionized business around the world, and if you don't have it yet, you should consider a fax/modem as the next addition to your arsenal of equipment.

This hardware guide concentrates on fax/modem boards, or cards, that you install in an available slot in your desktop or portable computer to send and receive faxes directly to and from your computer. Many computers come bundled with a fax/modem board these days, or at least have a fax/modem as a purchase option.

The features. One of the key distinctions found in today's fax/modem boards is the software that comes bundled with them and controls their functions. We're seeing an increase in Windows-based products, although some still work with DOS -- albeit not as transparently. With early fax/modem software on the PC side, you had to quit your current application and launch the fax software separately. The Intel SatisFAXtion board was one of the first to let you fax directly from within your application.

Conveniently, all the fax/modem software in this guide lets you fax straight from any application. When a fax is sent to your fax board rather than to a stand-alone fax, you can open the document and view it on-screen or print it and read the printout.

Stand-alone machines versus computerized faxing. In all fairness, there are good arguments for the stand-alone fax machine. Their prices have dropped, and they also include more standard features than they have in the past, namely a sheet feeder and a paper cutter. You can find these units starting at about $700 on the street. Older-model faxes, like the best-selling Murata 900, can be found for under $300. Best of all, you don't need to keep your computer on to take advantage of a stand-alone fax -- although up-and-coming fax/modem software will turn on your computer to receive data or a fax, and then shut it off. If you want to read more about the battle between stand-alone versus computer-based faxing, read senior editor Nick Sullivan's story, "A Shopper's Tip Sheet to Today's Fax Technology" (January 1992 issue, page 38).

One disadvantage of an internal fax/modem is having to open up your computer to install the card. Another consideration: Certain internal fax/modems for notebooks and laptop computers fit into certain brands of computers.

If you know how to operate a screwdriver, you should have no problem installing a fax/modem card, or any type of expansion card, in almost any desktop computer. Installing a card in a notebook is tougher because so much is packed into so little space. For example, with the Apple Power-Book, I had to pull out all the batteries, remove the display panel, gently wiggle the keyboard out of the way, and then put the minuscule fax/modem card into its tiny, assigned space. So if you don't feel comfortable inside a notebook computer, let the dealer do your dirty work.

Favorite things and wishful thinking. The most exciting innovation I've seen in a long time is The Complete Communicator for Windows, from The Complete PC, which, among other things, lets you transfer fax listings directly from your database into its database -- saving you valuable data-entry time. Other faxing utilities require you to enter all fax numbers again. (When I ran my own business from my home, I had more than 2,000 fax numbers in a database that I had to retype into a faxing program. If only I could have transferred that information. . . .) What I'd like to see bundled with fax/modems is software like FaxGrabber (which was previewed last month), a stand-alone OCR application for reading faxes received on computers, so you can edit them with your word processor.

On the Mac side, the 9600-baud, $795 Global Village PowerPort beats out the 2400-baud, $349 Apple Fax/Data Modem in speed and ease of use. Although the Apple Fax/Data Modem has come in handy on the road, I sure wish it could receive faxes as well as send them. And I can't use Apple's software to broadcase a fax.

The Global Village fax/modem for desktop Macs--the 2400-baud, small-enough-to-be-portable TelePort/FullFax--automatically powers up a Mac II to receive an incoming fax, switches between voice and fax calls, and doesn't require a power cord (it pulls its power from the computer). An internal fax/modem for the Macintosh desktop family from PSI Integration, announced just before press time, will turn on your Mac when it detects a ring, and turn it off once any transmission is complete.

The ultimate fax/modem--no such luck. The perfect fax/modem has yet to be created. What I'd love to do is pull my favorite features from each system and cram them into one software package. For example, I love the Frecom 1-Liner for letting my PC route calls to my phone, fax, modem, and answering machine (a HOME-OFFICE COMPUTING reader reports that he had trouble with his computerized bulletin-board system that shared his phone line through the 1-Liner). Please, guys, let me transfer data from my existing database into the fax/modem's database, as I can with The Complete Communicators. Let me group the names of those people I want to send faxes to, so that sending to all those in a group is a one-time procedure (most faxing software allows this). I'd like OCR software to be included or supported--The Complete Communicator does this, too. And then I'd want everything to work smoothly in the background.