More tips on faxing directly from your personal computer

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): It is always sad to bid farewell to a good friend if you don't know how long it will be until you can see each other again.

That is why I felt so desolate as I stared at the closed stores in Computer City in Glodok Plaza last week. They were dark and there was very little, if anything, left in their store display and on their shelves.

Computer City was the barometer for the level of computer technology adoption in Indonesia. If you couldn't find the piece of hardware you wanted in Computer City, chances were you wouldn't be able to find it anywhere in Indonesia. Quiet and bare Computer City today no longer has the high-tech ardor that we still felt only a few months back.

So, when I learned that Hewlett-Packard Indonesia was organizing a special event in Glodok Plaza beginning last Friday -- and starting today in Pondok Indah Mall -- it gave me a somewhat soothing feeling. At least one major vendor showed it still cared for its dealers who were in trouble.

Hopefully, these HP Discount Parties will be able to bring back some life to this place, albeit only for a very short time. I was informed that HP dealers would be selling printers and Vectra PCs at discounted prices (this may be a good chance to find bargains if you really cannot put off buying new hardware).

Signature

With the activities in Computer City screeching to a halt and HP trying to change the mood a little, we should continue optimizing the use of whatever we have and cut expenses wherever we can. Faxing directly from the computer is, as I wrote in last week's article in this column, something that most of us must learn, particularly if we already have a modem attached to our computer.

Last Monday, right after reading that piece, a good friend of mine, Jim Tilley from Bank Papan, e-mailed me. He shared with me how he added his signature in his faxes. Back in 1991, when he didn't have access to a scanner, he asked somebody to fax him a sheet of paper that had his own signature. This fax was received directly into his computer as an image file (remember that your fax/modem can also receive faxes). The saved file was then cropped. Everything outside the signature was cut off, and he has pasted this signature in all his faxes ever since.

Today, with scanners everywhere, we shouldn't have much difficulty getting our signature in a file. Just create a couple of your John Hancocks on a clean piece of paper so that you can choose the one that meets your demanding specifications.

Then, place the paper on the scanner and load the scanning program. In the accompanying picture, see the zoomed image of a signature. All you have to do is select it with the borders as close as possible to its edges. The smaller the area, the smaller the size of the file and the faster you can paste it on your document. Don't scan the signature as a line drawing, though. Some of your pen strokes may be too vague for the scanner to capture. Scan it as a black and white photo so that you have the entire signature scanned.

My seven-year-old HP ScanJet IIC has only a limited number of file formats into which it can save a scanned image. Usually I save it in the .TIF format. If you use Winword and your scanner can save in the .WMF format, it is better to choose this one. By the way, if you want to use the signature in your e-mails as well, you will have to convert the file into a .GIF or .JPG format.

What you have to do now is compose your fax in Winword, Ami Pro, WordPerfect or any other word processing program, and insert the signature file under "Sincerely yours,". In Winword, for example, it is a good idea to save the file in its Clipart subdirectory. All you to do then is click on Insert, then Picture and From file, and then you select the name of your signature file.

However, since the signature will be a raster image, the faxing time will be longer. It is be advisable that you not put your signature unless it is really necessary to do so. Internal office memos, in general, do not really require your signature.

More tips

Last week I told you that you could fax a document from inside your word processor by printing to WinFax Pro. If you have closed the document and the program already, you can also fax it directly from Windows explorer.

What you have to do is start Windows Explorer, go to the subdirectory where you keep your files (in Winword it's usually My Documents), and select with the mouse the particular document you want to fax. Then you click on it with the right mouse button. As usual, a menu will appear. You click on Sent to and choose WinFax Pro. This will call up the fax program.

As the fax/modem is also capable of receiving faxes and storing them as computer files, you can also fill in a form that has been faxed to you and fax it back without having to print it out. To do this, you have to open the stored fax file in Fax Viewer, found under the Tools menu item in WinFax Pro. You have to enable the Annotate feature in the View menu item in Fax Viewer, and then you can start filling in the form. When you're done, you can save it back and fax it to the sender.

Furthermore, if you want to convert a fax file, which is essentially an image file, into a text file, you can run the optical character recognition (OCR) utility that comes with WinFax Pro. Again, you have to open the file in Fax Viewer and run the utility, which is found under the Tools menu item.

Finally, you can save more on your phone bills by delaying the fax transmission to a later time when the phone rate is lower, for instance, at midnight. In WinFax Pro, this is very easy to do. After you specify the recipient fax number, click on the Delivery button. In the dialog box that will appear, you'll be able to set the time you want WinFax Pro to start faxing.