Tech Toolbox: Just the Fax
By Robert J. Elisberg
While it might be a fair assumption today that a fax machine is a requirement for the home office, it’s not always possible, depending on a variety of reasons. In its place, a lesser-known fax board — built into most modems — can fit the bill. In fact, for many cases, it might even be preferable.
A fax board runs off the modem, not much different than using a modem and telephone line as one does for a dial-up connection to the Internet. All you need is a fax software program to organize and control everything.
Although in many ways a standalone fax machine is ideal for its simplicity — stick in a piece of paper, dial the phone number and there it goes — there are advantages to a fax board. For starters, it doesn’t take up any room at all, zippo, nada, none. Second, especially if you have a large document to fax, you don’t have to print out all the many pages first, you simply send your document file directly from your computer. And third, it doesn’t cost you anything (that "zippo, nada, none" thing again) if you already have a dial-up modem, which is likely, since the fax board already built-in. Moreover, if you use a notebook computer for work on the road, all you have to do is plug in any phone line, and you’re ready to go for faxing.
Of course, when you use a fax board on your computer, fighting for time with your modem, there’s always the issue of conflicts with your phone lines. But hey, we deal with that too. We’re a full-service operation here, bucko.
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In the world of computer-based faxing, WinFax from Symanetec has been the standard for years. In fact, it has always been such a strong product that it remains similar to the earliest versions. Many of the improvements along the way have been minimal, though beneficial, making things a bit easier to use. The latest incarnation falls into that same range, as well — however, some of the improvements this time around are more notable than for the last few upgrades. They may still just be fine-tuning what was already there, but the fine-tuning is especially fine this time around. Plus, there a few nice additions.
One such tweak is in the Message Manager, which is the control center for the Inbox, Sent Log, Outbox, Cover Pages and Phonebook. Now, everything is easily accessible from a vertical toolbar on the left, similar to the Outlook bar in Microsoft’s information manager.
Each of these above-mentioned areas is well laid-out and extremely configurable, though that’s the same as before. All the received or sent faxes are listed on the top half of the screen, and the highlighted item shows up in an Expanded View window below. This Expanded View shows your choice of either a thumbnail view of the selected fax pages, a full page view, or phone number and identifying statistics. It’s very easy to switch with between these views with a simple click on a tab.
Another double-click on a received fax, and the Fax Viewer opens. Elegant to use, with thumbnail versions of each fax page on the left in a Side Bar, you can either individually select any thumbnail graphic, or click on numbered tabs on the bottom of the screen. The selected page of the fax then appears in the main window, and you can magnify its size to your choice — to see the full page (with everything in smaller print) or focus on just a section of the fax (in larger letter size). One-touch buttons can adjust the view instantly. Additionally, there are a variety of graphic options to let you mark up a fax with either text, highlighting, arrows, shapes and even "stamps" (like "Confidential" or "Approved"). If you don’t like the annotations you’ve made, you can select "Revert," and everything will go back to the way it was in the last saved session.
Related to annotations and stamps is a wonderful new feature — the ability to include a signature in your fax. Previously, this was one of the noteworthy things lacking in WinFax, since all you could do was type text.
You access received faxes by reading them on-screen or printing them out — however, there is a third option: you can run it through the OCR (optical character recognition) and turn it into a regular document file. WinFax comes with a very good OCR program, which converts your received fax (which is literally a graphic) into a text file: you simply select the option, and after it does the conversion, a split-window shows the original fax and the OCR results so that you can compare each version and make corrections. (And you will want to make corrections. OCR is far from a flawless procedure, but if you get a reasonably clean fax, you’ll have a reasonably good chance of an acceptable OCR.) After you edit the text, you can then save it as the document file. This is a wonderful feature (should you need it) not available with a standalone fax machine.
One of the nice features of recent versions of WinFax has been the way the Fax Viewer also displays thumbnail versions of all the pages you’re planning to fax out, which appear in the Side Bar, as well. Click on any of these miniature graphics, and the full page pops in. You can drag-and-drop these thumbnails to rearrange the order of pages to be sent. You just attach the document file to your fax the same as if you are attaching a file to outgoing email. It takes a few moments of waiting as the program "prints" the document you’re attaching, but the advantages of flexibility are worth the brief wait. No notable improvements here from the previous version, but it’s a strong feature.
WinFax offers many hundreds of cover pages, in business, personal or general categories. Most of these you will never use, often because they’re fairly cartoony or too graphic. In fact, the simplest forms are probably the best, and you might use the most basic "Quick Cover Page" almost all the time, although you may like to have some of the others around, just in case. Previously, you pretty much had an all-or-nothing choice…and these took up a lot of hard disk space. True, most people have huge hard disks these days, but it’s still a waste. The new version of WinFax, however, makes it significantly easier than before to delete the cover pages you don’t want.
An especially helpful improvement in this upgrade is in the Phonebook. Now, during the set-up process, you can have WinFax link to all of your system’s address books — whether Outlook, Lotus Organizer, your email address book or whatever. Each are clearly listed individually in the WinFax Phonebook section, and you therefore have at your fingertips all of your personal contact information completely integrated. No intricate importing of files required. And this external contact information is now alphabetized by last name, which was not the case in the earlier WinFax version where you had to import the files. (It had annoyingly sorted by first name.)
When your fax is ready to go, a new option is the choice of selecting the crisper Photo Quality option to "print" your document, if your fax is graphic heavy. And then at last, just click the Send button, and you’re done. But if you want to schedule faxes to send at another time, it’s very easy -- you can delay sending your fax until a specific time, set to send during off-peak hours (and you can define "off-peak hours" to be whatever you want) or hold until a time of your choosing. Either click the "Schedule" button on the Send Fax page or select "Recipient" from the main menu bar at the top of the WinFax screen, and all of your options appear.
Speaking of send options, there’s a new one worth noting. Since someone you want to fax may not have a machine on their end, you can now send or forward a fax as an email attachment. True, in most cases where this would be needed you can probably send the fax as an email attachments through your own regular email account, but there could be exceptions it wouldn’t be possible. More importantly, if you’re already running WinFax, there’s no need to leave the application.
One final, intriguing new feature is Junk Fax Management. Similar to spam filters with email, this allows you to enter a fax source’s ID to automatically get rid of faxes you don’t want. It works best if you subscribe to the Caller ID service of your phone company and if you regularly get unwanted faxes from the same number.
WinFax lets you forward faxes, and will even allow you to configure the program to contact your pager (should you have one, of course…) when a fax arrives. You can also set up the program for different configurations so that it can be used easily at various locations and with calling cards, for mobile use.
The program’s Controller option will insert an icon into your Windows System Tray (that’s the area of your monitor to the far right on your Taskbar, where your system clock is located). This allows for several easy right-click options, including one that will more quickly load only the Send Fax portion of WinFax, rather than having to waiting for all of its many features to load.
And WinFax does indeed have many features. It’s always been a strong program, which has improved itself over the years in small gradations. This time around however they found a way to raise the bar. Most of the improvements are still gradations rather than new features, but several are large improvement. And they even figured out how to add some new, excellent features, as well. A standalone fax machine will always have significant advantages, but computer faxing has its benefits, and should you need them, WinFax does its job wonderfully.
Okay, but what if you only have one phone line for everything — home use, Internet connection, faxing, everything? Or even if you have a standalone line for your modem, which still must be disconnected from the Internet to use the fax capability?
Sending faxes under any of these conditions isn’t a problem, since you control when you want something sent and therefore can avoid a conflict. But receiving a fax, ahh, that’s another matter. That’s where your personal juggling act comes in for connecting and disconnecting and timing and…oh, on and on. But — if you use an online service like JConnect, your problem is pretty much solved.
JConnect comes in several flavors, including a Premier service that costs $15 a month, or $165 a year. However, we’re not going to focus on that here, since we’re dealing solely with the assumption that WinFax is in use on your system. With this the case, JConnect also provides a free service, and that’s the center of our attention here.
How JConnect works is simplicity itself. You download the free "J2 Messenger" software (more on that below), sign up for a free account, are assigned a fax number and…that’s it. This is your fax number, period. You give it out to people as your fax number. They use it as a fax number. Easy. What happens is that when someone sends a fax to you at this number, it is automatically converted into an email attachment, and sent directly to you in your email box. When it arrives, you just click on the attachment, and the fax opens up. It looks exactly like the fax sent to you — because it is the fax sent you to.
The advantage of this is clear: you can receive a fax at any time, 24 hours a day. And you don’t have to disconnect any of your phone connections.
(The aforementioned free J2 Messenger software is the program into which the email fax attachment is loaded and opens, allowing you to read it. Think of it similarly to that of a word processor into which you load your text documents. J2 Messenger installs incredibly easily on your computer.)
A few points must be mentioned. This free JConnect fax number will likely not be local. It will probably be in your state and nearby, but even that’s not a guarantee. As a result, someone faxing to you may get a small toll charge of a few cents (depending on the length of the fax). But — there is no cost to you, on the receiving end.
Also, because of the conversion process, there is a delay in receiving your fax. Usually, it’s pretty fast. Eighty-five percent of the time, I seemed to receive the sent-fax within a half hour. Generally within 15 minutes. Often within 5. But occasionally, it would take longer, maybe up to a couple hours. So, if a fax is critically important, that’s a time you might want to disconnect your Internet connection and use your WinFax, giving out your home number where the fax should be sent.
(Incidentally, the free JConnect service also includes the option to receive voicemail over your computer.)
Once you get your JConnect account set up, which takes a very little time and is painfully easy, using it afterwards becomes seamless. Literally, it is nothing more than receiving email and double-clicking on the attachment.
Along with WinFax, these two options provide a strong combination to consider.
Toolbox Notes
Here’s an effective tip for the mouse-challenged among you about editing a Microsoft Word document. If you ever want to move a paragraph, just click anywhere in the paragraph, and hold down the Alt-Shift key combination while tapping the up-or-down arrow at the same time. The entire paragraph will move to your desired location. This also works if you’ve highlighted two or more paragraphs.
If you use the Windows Media Player but are bothered by its size or that it takes up any screen "real estate," try this. Right-click on the System Tray (the part of your toolbar where the clock is), choose Toolbars and select "Windows Media Player." Then the next time you launch the Media Player, simply minimize it (click the Minimize button near the X in the upper-right corner), and the Media Player will automatically appear only on your Toolbar. To get it back to full-function, just click the Restore button.
Note: The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences neither implicitly nor explicitly endorses opinions or attitudes expressed in this article. Copyright 2004, Robert J. Elisberg. All rights reserved.