Fax

As you'd expect, Publisher 2002 fits in seamlessly with Office XP, so you'll find features such as XP style menus and the new Task Pane and AutoCorrect to name but a few. Word users will approve of the Import wizard, as you can load documents directly into Publisher and apply new fonts, styles, and color schemes at the click of a mouse button. A huge range of predefined templates are provided, and you now get an additional 15 design sets focusing on business stationary themes--just pick one from the Task Pane and it's loaded, ready for your master touch. Fill effects and background choices abound, and you decide how you want text to wrap around each object.

The Web page design tools are a mixed bag, as Publisher allows you to produce excellent results and export them directly into HTML format. However, a lack of control over the Web page naming convention used for multipage projects, and the fact that Netscape Navigator doesn't cope well with Publisher's proprietary XML-based code, won't impress professional designers. It's a pity that Adobe's PDF format isn't supported either. However, while these shortcomings may make Publisher 2002 less appealing to professionals, it offers the rest of us a flying start into the world of desktop publishing. --Dave Mitchell

• Generate photo-quality faxes
• Integrates smoothly with key business applications to simplify your management of client and customer interactions
• Drag-and-drop faxing of documents Ability to build a fax from multiple document sources

• All-in-one fax, voice, data, E-mail, and contact management software
• Communicate anyway, anywhere or with anyone

• Design and import your own cover page designs or edit the cover pages available in FAXstf PRO's preferences panel
• Automate routine tasks with AppleScript -- make sending faxes from multiple applications or creating custom notifications quick & easy
• Save your most often-used settings to easily fax from home, the office, or on the road. Fax from anywhere!

Nice touches abound; you can schedule a fax broadcast to multiple recipients, and set it to spool to two modems. WinFax Pro also can notify you of incoming faxes via a system-tray icon, cell telephone, or pager. If you need to turn an incoming fax into editable text, you can do it with its built-in OCR facility; although this is more of a "lite" version, and not quite as accurate as current standalone OCR packages.

There's a new Drag and Drop Depot icon on the desktop for quick dispatching of documents. A new high-quality photo option improves print quality at the cost of extending transmission times. If you're plagued by junk faxes, there's a new spam filter; although first you'll need to get a modem that supports Caller ID, and subscribe to the service with your phone company. When you buy a modem these days, often you'll get a "lite" fax program with it; if you only need to send/receive faxes occasionally, this is probably sufficient. However, if faxing is a key element of your work, you'll want something a bit better; something with a bit more power. WinFax Pro 10.0 more than fits the bill. --Roger Gann

• Send or forward faxes that feature high-quality images
• Add signatures & logos to outgoing faxes
• Send a faxed message as an e-mail attachment

WinFax Pro is full of features, including a cover page designer, an automated backup manager, a network fax-sharing module, and more. Its interface will be familiar and comfortable to anyone who uses Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. The Message Manager--where you do most of your faxing work--is divided into Outlook-style panes, with several folders that include a receive log, a send log, an outbox, and a wastebasket in the upper left, a list of faxes in the upper right, and a multipurpose pane on the bottom that lets you view details about a fax or take a quick peek at it.

Opening a fax for viewing invokes a viewer applet, which looks like Adobe Acrobat Reader. It comes complete with a pane of thumbnails down the left side for page navigation, with the main document view taking up the larger portion of the screen.

You can compose fax documents in any word processor. To fax them, use the main WinFax Pro interface, a button installed in your Microsoft Word toolbar, or a drag-and-drop desktop icon. WinFax also lets you send faxes as attachments through Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, or Exchange, which is a mysterious feature considering you can send your documents as attachments without WinFax Pro. In any regard, while the feature worked well on a Windows Me machine with Office 2000, it caused errors and crashes on Windows XP.

Other problems surfaced during testing. Faxing directly through Word XP with the toolbar button caused crashes. A "photo quality" mode offered in the send module doesn't come anywhere close to photo quality. Every time we opened Word XP, an error dialog appeared; Symantec's tech support said that it occurred because we didn't have a modem installed. That conversation took place after we'd sent several test faxes through our installed modem.

WinFax Pro 10 worked as advertised on our Windows Me system, and it's full of outstanding features. However, if you've upgraded to Windows XP or if you're running Office XP, hold off until Symantec patches this program into submission. --Joel Durham Jr.

Product Description:
With WinFax Pro any size business or home office can easily manage their faxes like any major business enterprise! Work with key Internet & business software to extend your business reach Manage faxes more effectively with WinFax Pro!

• Take complete control over the faxes you send & receive
• Get more out of your faxing automated fax forwarding and broadcast fax capability
• Retrieve voice mail from any telephone and transfer messages between mailboxes

The voice-mail capability provides secure, customizable voice mail, and offers you the ability to create multiple business departments and personal extensions for your home or office. Users can retrieve voice mail from any telephone and transfer messages between mailboxes. The voice-mail system lets you set up and maintain a fax-on-demand service (99 documents per mailbox) to automatically deliver informational faxes to your customers. A new feature allows voice-mail messages to be routed directly to an e-mail account. Retrieve them, listen to them, even forward them to other accounts. If you've got a pager, you can receive automatic notification of new messages. HotFax Message Center even allows you to route calls to different mailboxes based on caller ID information. Set up an unlimited number of voice mailboxes, and identified calls are routed to the appropriate mailbox automatically.

HotFax Message Center empowers e-mail with new fax and voice capabilities. Now you can send and receive faxes and voice-mail messages directly to any e-mail address. When you send a fax to an e-mail account, the recipient can read it on screen, print it, or forward it to another e-mail account, just like an ordinary message. HotFax Message Center will route voice-mail messages to any e-mail account you specify as a compressed attachment. You play it back just like any PC audio file and then save or forward it as you like.