Re: Fax Machines

Subject: Re: Fax Machines
From: Paul Beck <Paul_Beck -at- 3MAIL -dot- 3COM -dot- COM>
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1993 13:08:00 PDT

Karen said:

"If you have a fax modem, you can simply edit the file after it's
received by your computer, I believe. So size doesn't need to be
an issue."

Be very careful here. I have a Global Village Gold (14.4) Fax modem. They
recently sent me an offer to buy a program called OCR reader which supposedly
takes the fax which I receive into a file on my computer and converts it to a
text file for any of a number of popular word processing programs (MS-Word for
example).

I haven't looked into this yet, and I haven't received any faxes at home yet,
but there is something very fishy here. Why would I need an Optical Character
Reader (OCR) (read-extra) program to read a file that is stored in my computer
on the hard disk in a file. This is fishy. There are no optics involved.

The file that is created by the Fax modem software might not be readable by a
word processor or text editor application. Nothing in the documentation that
came with the modem says how the file is created. Nor does it say that you can
access this file in any way except by sending it to the printer. Now wait a
minute! If the file can be read by a PostScript printer then it should be
readable by a word processor, shouldn't it?

If anyone has any information on this I would like to hear what they say.

I will be running a fax test from my workplace to my home. If I find out that
an extra program is not required to read the file with a word processor or text
editor then I will most energetically raise this issue with the modem vendor.

Caveat Emptor when buying technology without running tests. As it is I am
asking question and running a test to check out the claims by the Fax modem
manufacturer before I spend my $49.00 on a program I might not need.

PLB
Return address: Paul_Beck -at- 3mail -dot- 3Com -dot- com


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