Save your money by faxing directly through your PC

Save your money by faxing directly through your PC

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): In offices and homes, fax machines have become as ubiquitous as 'tukang parkir' (parking attendants) in Jakarta. In fact, no real office today can operate without one.

The popularity of the fax is justifiable. Sending a fax is more cost-efficient than making a phone call, since you can say a lot more on a sheet of paper than in a two-minute phone conversation. Better still, you tend to be more focused when you write down your message. On the other hand, when you talk, you can easily get sidetracked and forget the things you wanted to say, ask or confirm before you dialed the number.

Fax/modems are not as ubiquitous as fax machines, but they cost less and enable you to access the Internet as well. Today, you can hardly find a modem that doesn't perform double duty as a fax. The faxing capability of the modem is now so taken for granted that people never call the device a fax/modem anymore. They just call it a modem, and they expect it to have the fax function as well.

While the transmission speed of the modem keeps increasing -- 33.6 and 56Kbps being the norms today, the speed at which faxes are sent remains basically the same, i.e., 9,600 bps. If the phone line is good and the fax at the other end can support it, you may get a transmission speed of 14,400 bps. Which means you can save some money and buy an older modem if you intend to use only its fax function for your PC.

Both fax machines and modems have the intelligence to negotiate the right speed at which they can comfortably communicate. If at 9,600 bps they cannot obtain a stable connection, they will automatically go down to the next level, i.e., 7,200 bps.

Fax directly

In the past, we used to print our documents first, sign them and take them to the fax machine. This was OK before the economic crisis. Today, many of us should really find ways to cut down on expenses, including the expenses for ink and toner cartridges. One thing I've been doing is using e-mail, and I'm sure a lot of you have been doing this much longer than I have. Another thing that I've also done -- if the other guy is not on the Internet yet -- is to send him a fax directly from my PC. Believe me, it's very easy to do.

Of course, you need to have an external modem attached to your computer (PC or Mac). Or you could buy an internal modem that would fill one of the slots on your motherboard. Whichever one you decide to buy, the modem should allow you to send and receive faxes with your computer.

Then you have to install the fax software that comes with the modem. However, my recommendation is the highly popular Winfax Pro from Symantec. You may not find it in the box of the modem you buy, in which case you would have to buy it separately. Fortunately, it's not very expensive for the wealth of features that it has.

When the modem is connected and works well, and the software is properly installed, you can send your faxes without having to print them first. This will save you paper and ink (which are what the term "consumables" means, by the way).

Two ways

You can send your faxes in two ways. For quick and short messages you can use the facility in Winfax Pro. Load the program, click on the Send menu item and click on New Fax. This will give you the Winfax Pro Send dialog box. You can now fill in the name of the recipient, his fax number, and you can type in your message in the box under the Cover page Quick Cover Page option.

You can copy the name and number that you've just typed into the phonebook. Just click on the Add to phonebook button found on the right side of the dialog box. You can also copy the names and numbers from the phonebook into the recipient boxes automatically by double-clicking on them in the phonebook list.

If you wish, you can also preview the page that you're going to fax before you actually send it. To do this, click on the Option button and click on Allow me to preview and annotate fax button to activate the option. While the dialog box is open, you can also specify whether you want to send the fax with the Standard or Fine resolution. To save on your phone bills, I suggest you use the standard resolution.

If you turn off the preview option, the fax will immediately be transmitted after you click on the Send button found on the bottom left corner. You'll hear the modem dialing the recipient's fax number, and you'll hear some strange sound that is not quite like a Stradivarius violin before the fax gets printed at the other end. By the way, as this takes place, Winfax Pro will give you a visual representation of what is going on. You'll see a cute graphic image of a fax machine, and you'll see how it swallows the paper and spits it out on its lower end just like the real thing.

For longer documents, the quick cover page will not be adequate. You can create your document in any word processor program that has the Print command (in the accompanying example I created a fax in Lotus Ami Pro). Once the document is ready, you can fax it directly from inside the program.

The way it works is like this: You send the fax by telling the word processor to print it. However, instead of piping the data to the printer, the word processor sends it to the fax program, in this case, to Winfax Pro. Winfax Pro then converts the file into a raster image that it then faxes to the intended recipient.

So, before you click on the OK button in the Print dialog box, you have to make sure that the active printer is not HP LaserJet or Canon BubbleJet or Epson Stylus or whatever, but Winfax Pro. In Ami Pro, you should do this by clicking on File, and then Printer Setup. In Winword, you can change the active printer right from the Print dialog box.

Tips

Ever since the heyday of Ami Pro, every word processor has come complete with a set of templates for composing faxes. Just remember that the simpler your fax, the shorter the required time to send it. Therefore, unless you really think that form is more important than substance, you should avoid the fancy stuff that some of these fax templates contain.

Finally, if you need to resubmit a fax, you can follow the print procedure all over again or you can simply load Winfax Pro, click with the right mouse button on the fax item found on the list, and click on the Resubmit command from the menu that appears.