IF YOU HAVE A FAX MODEM in your PowerBook, sending computer-generated documents while you're on the road is easy. But if you have a paper document you want to fax, you have to pay up to $10 a page at the hotel front desk or hunt down a fax machine in an unfamiliar field office or town. Unless you have Bansai's MFX-1 Portable Facsimile Transmitter, that is.
Essential Faxing. The MFX-1 is about as wide and high as a PowerBook, but only about 2 inches deep. Inside is just the heart of a fax machine: the scanner and the transmitter. To use it, you connect it to either a telephone or your Mac and dial by using the telephone keypad or telecommunications software on your Mac. When you slide paper documents into the MFX-1, it will send crisp, clear faxes to almost any fax machine or fax modem at up to 9,600 bps.
Although the idea of a small, portable fax machine for sending hard-copy documents is nice, we found having to plug it in to a phone or a computer just to dial was cumbersome, especially since Bansai could have fit a small keypad onto the device. The only display elements on the MFX-1 are status lights, and the only controls are the stop, start, and mode buttons. And although the MFX-1 itself weighs little more than a pound, the bulky 4.5-x-4-x-4-inch power brick you have to use with it weighs more. Furthermore, you can send faxes only if you're within a few feet of a U.S. power outlet and a standard RJ-11 phone jack, until this fall, when Bansai will ship its external battery pack, international power adapter, acoustic coupler, and adapter for plugging the MFX-1 into an automobile cigarette lighter -- all of which will be sold separately.
Skinny Scanner. We actually found the MFX-1 more useful as a portable scanner. If you have a fax modem built in, you can hook it up to your computer and transmit documents into your Mac for OCR or retouching. Then you can retransmit them directly from your Mac.
If you particularly want to avoid public fax machines when you need to send a confidential paper document, or if you don't have convenient access to a fax machine while traveling, the MFX-1 might be right for you, even priced at $379. Otherwise, without the accessories, its usefulness and value are limited for most users. / Raines Cohen
Bansai MFX-1 (2 out of 5 mice) Poor / Price: $379 (list). Company: Bansai Product Sales, San Rafael, CA; 800-647-1155 or 415-491-0561. Reader Service: Circle #414.
