Very likely one of the most successful electronic products of the 80's, the ever present FAX machine can be found in nearly every office in America. While most FAX machines consist of a flat bed scanner (like a small Xerox machine) that transmits the copied image over the phone instead of making a paper duplicate (although some can do that too), in the IBM PC world an increasingly popular form of the FAX machine is the FAX card. Essentially this PC card is a high speed modem with special software that is dedicated to sending and receiving FAX transmissions. Now, MichTron has brought this technology to the Amiga in the shape of the Fast FAX.
Fast FAX is an external 9600 baud FAX modem, so it will work with any Amiga equipped with a serial port. It has it's own power supply and it does not use any of the Amiga's power, an important consideration for users of the A500. The package comes with it's own special FAX software, so all you need besides FastFAX and an Amiga is a phone line, and you're ready to go.
Installation of the hardware is very straightforward, and can be accomplished in less than a minute or two. Installing the non-copyprotected software can take a couple of minutes longer as it requires you to add a line to your Startup-Sequence, assigning the location of the FAX software as well as copying the appropriate files from the supplied floppy to your own system disks (it is hard drive installable).
Once setup, FastFAX can receive FAX transmissions just like any other FAX machine. Unlike standard FAX's the received file is not automatically printed out to paper however, instead it is stored on disk. You can then view it on the screen or print it on your Preference supported printer as required.
FastFAX can be setup in SLEEP mode, which means it just waits in the background for incoming FAX transmissions. It seems to multitask nicely and caused no problems for me when other programs were being used.
Sending documents on FastFAX is somewhat different from other FAX machines you might be familiar with. Since there is no scanner, it can only send documents that are already in machine readable form. This generally means ASCII text files, such as those created by most word processors. A side effect of not having a scanner means that those text documents sent by FastFAX are of a very high quality once received, since they were not subjected to copying process.
You can also include graphics in your documents by using specialized dot commands. There are dot commands designed for signatures, cover pages and letterheads. These are normally IFF images (although they could be mere text files) that were created using a paint program like DeluxePaint. Before they can be used they must be converted to a special format with a supplied utility program. Once this is done they can be used over and over with each transmission, as long as you include the appropriate dot command in the ASCII file.
An important aspect of the FastFAX software is the Scheduling Menu. FOr those users who have to send FAX's to more than one party on a regular basis, the scheduler can be set up to call them at a user defined time and send a document. A log of all FAX usage is maintained through the Transaction and Schedule Log options, where each incoming and outgoing FAX is recorded. The FastFAX software also has a phone book option, where you can add names of companies, the contact person and their FAX number.
If you use your Amiga in an office (or home office) environment, you will find the FastFAX an acceptable alternative to the standard FAX machine. The only drawbacks are the lack of a scanner, and the fact you must keep your Amiga on all the time. With those caveats, I can recommend it.
