Delrina rolls out Fax Pro upgrade - Delrina Fax Pro for Macintosh 1.5 fax software - Hardware Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, June, 1994 by Bob LeVitus

Rating: *** Delrina Fax Pro for Macintosh Version Reviewed: 1.5 List Price: $129 Average Street Price: $80 Publisher: Delrina, (408) 363-2345, (800) 268-6082

MAC

Delrina Fax Pro for Macintosh is an ambitious and, for the most part, successful fax software package with a few unique features as well as a number of rough edges. The program installs easily, placing more than a dozen files and folders in their proper places on youor desk. To its credits, the manual explains exactly where fiels are installed and how to remove them if you have to.

Once the software is installed, you can fax documents (provided you have a fax/modem board, of course) that have been created with almost any Macintosh application or with Delrina's FaxWriter desk accessory, and receive incoming faxes as well. Sending and receiving takes place in the background. There's also an Auto Print function that prints incoming faxes as soon as they're received, but it doesn't work in the background so you can't use your Mac for any other purpose if Auto Print is turned on.

As with most fax program, sending a fax is no harder than printing a document. In any application, hold down the option key while choosing print from the file menu. The fax addressing dialog box appears: Choose a name from your phone book (or create a new address took entry), then click the OK button to send your fax Receicing faxes is even easier--just click the Auto Receive checkbox in the ModemStatus desk accessory.

Delrina Fax Pro includes an OCR (optical character recognition) feature, which converts incoming faxes into editable word processing documents. Though no worse than other OCR software, we experienced several errors per paragraph in each of the faxed documents we converted.

Delrina Fax Pro has several features not found in other Mac fax software. For example, it's the only program we've seen that can send and receive 16-shade grayscale faxes. And it's the only one that lets you specify delivery times and on a recipient-by-recipient basis: You can tell the software to delay sending non-priority faxes until after 5 p.m. (when telephone rates might be cheaper), while always sending time-sensitiuve faxes to clients immediately.

Unfortunately, we found that some of its features do not perform well. For example, the FaxWriter desk accessory is both a awkwawrd and slow. Even poor typists will grow frustrated waiting for it to catch up with their fingers, and its ugly half-page headers can't be altered. On the other hand, the documentation is better than average and technical support--available by toll call, on CompuServe or the Delrina BBS, or by fax--is top-notch.

You have to give Delrina credit for trying. As we were going to press, we received a prerelease copy of version 1.5.1, which Delrina says addresses some of the flaws we found in version 1.5, adds several new features (including badly needed cover sheet templates), and corrests all known bugs. A native Power-PC version will be available later this year.

With the exception of Global Village modems (which come with GlobalFax software, designed and written by Global Village exclusively for their modems), fax/modems these days are bundled with less-than-stellar fax software, usually an older version of FaxSTF or the truly wretched QuickLink Fax. If you're using either, Delrina Fax Pro has other benefits you don't have and may need and is worth a look in spite of its blemishes.