NWA-PCUG 2/99 NewsLetter Article 18861 N. Hwy 112, Springdale, AR 72762-9303 WinFax Pro 9.0 A Software Review by Dave Gerber Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group,Inc. From 11/98 Sarasota PC Monitor, SPCUG email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/ E-mail is the wonder of the day. Anyone, anywhere in the world can communicate with you in minutes, if not seconds. Great as it is, it hardly makes a dent in the need for faxing. Documents and images of all kinds conveyed by fax still constitute a goodly percentage of phone traffic. It is cheaper and more efficient to send a fax, particularly during off-hours when phone rates are low, than a first class letter-not to mention minutes and not days to do the job. Furthermore, a fax generates more attention at the recipient's end. If you are going to fax, you want a reliable, competent program to do the job. The world's standard is without question, WinFax Pro. Now in its ninth version, this extremely popular and capable software just gets better and better with each new release. Using a fax machine, a computer of any kind with a modem, or a multi- purpose device, WinFax 9 allows you to create, edit, send and receive faxes. Individual or multiple users on a network can use WinFax with ease and efficiency. You can even send and receive faxes on your laptop with a cell phone attached. However you do it, WinFax both sends and receives documents in the highest quality possible-clean, sharp and clear! A preview feature in WinFax permits you to view exactly what your party on the other end will receive. WinFax provides a wide variety of different cover sheets from which you can choose. Alternatively, it makes it easy to design your own. A scheduling feature allows you to save your fax, then schedule it to be transmitted at an off-peak hour, unattended, when phone rates are lower. A dual modem support feature permits the use of two modems simultaneously to send a number of faxes faster and at once, or to send them more efficiently to a number of people at the same time. Using Xerox Text Bridge technology, WinFax can readily transmit and receive optical character recognition (OCR) automatically with ease. The translation is exceptionally clean-more so than with any other fax product I have attempted to use. A paging feature can alert you to messages being received, and a forwarding feature can send those messages to you at whatever location you designate-even to an E-mail address. It's a nice way to assure that your faxes will follow you, no matter where you are. It can also activate your pager or PCS phone. V9.0 can also establish a universal in-box to act as a joint depository for your voice, E-mail and fax messages. You can access that in-box from a remote location when necessary. When used in conjunction with TalkWorks Pro, you can also receive voice mail. WinFax maintains a send and receive log that contains a record of all the faxes you sent or received and whether they were successful. A graphic representation of an outgoing fax indicates the success of your transmission. You can enter address information into WinFax's address book that you can access when addressing your fax to either individuals or groups. For safety, WinFax will back up your address book and logs of faxes sent and received. You can, of course, restore any backed up information as necessary. Your phone book can exchange information with both Symantec ACT and Microsoft Outlook. Version 9 is well endowed with highly graphic Wizards for most operations, making it not only powerful but extremely easy to use. A novice can dive right in without second thought. If you are running a previous version of WinFax, not to worry-V9 will import their fax logs and phone books. It can even be set up to dial your calling card number when sending long distance faxes. Installation of WinFax is a breeze. Wizards will help you to install and access the features you want. WinFax can be activated directly from your word processor. It lists itself on installation as one of your printers, and you can choose it when you want to fax the document you have just created. WinFax requires a Pentium PC running Windows 95, 98, or NT; 16MB of RAM (32 is recommended), CD-ROM drive, 57MB of hard drive space for full installation and a fax modem. You will find it at a street price of about $100. It is, without question, the absolute king of fax software. Nothing else even comes close! Symantec Corp., (800) 441-7234. : Copyright 1998. This article is from the November 1998 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277- 1889. 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